Southern Road Trip • Austin • Day 1

It’s been an extremely long day (I got one hour of sleep last night), and I am very tired, but I wanted to update you on the first day of my Southern Road Trip spent in Austin.

Actually, the bulk of the day was spent traveling. Having discovered last night that our flight to Austin, originally scheduled for 7:30 had been moved to 6:15, we left our house at 4:55 this morning for the airport. My sister has spent the night, and Cyrena, bless her heart, drove us to the airport.

We flew Delta, and I have just have to give them props here because not only were both flights on time in departure and arrival, but I haven’t been on a plane that empty in a long, long time. Everyone had an opportunity to grab themselves at least one, or even two, additional empty seats to spread out and try to get a little sleep. Except me of course — I can’t sleep on a plane very well.

We arrived in Austin around 12:15, picked up our spacious rental minivan, and headed for our hotel. We settled in briefly, freshened up, and headed out to the South Congress (SoCo) neighborhood to check it out.

Austin clearly has a thing for food trucks, particularly in restored travel trailers. They are in every neighborhood it seems. You can be sure I will be checking them out before our departure tomorrow.

A vintage travel trailer selling fried chicken in the SoCo neighborhood.

This trailer sold sweet and savory fried breads.

This trailer sold crepes.

There were some really cool and funky stores in this neighborhood. It was late afternoon/early evening by the time we got there, and the streets were alive with people walking, eating outside, and lots of dogs. People clearly love their dogs here in Austin.

This was a most peculiar and interesting store. Filled with antiques and oddities all beautifully displayed in scenes.

We ate dinner at a farm-to-table restaurant called Cipollina. We were both starving by that point, and the food was absolutely delicious. I had a cheese pate with honey, pistachios, arugula, pears for an appetizer. Everything on the plate was delicious, particularly the honey, which truly exploded with taste as soon as it hit your tongue. It came from a local company called Round Rock and I will be on the hunt for it tomorrow. My entree was tagliatelle with beef sausage, paprika, bacon, and grana padano. It was perfect. The pasta was cooked perfectly, the sauce wasn’t too creamy or too tomatoey, the beef sausage was a bit spicy and really firm and delicious and it had a delightful spice to it.

Cheese Plate shortly after arrival at the table.

Cheese plate after I was finished. I practically licked the plate to get every last bit of that delicious honey off .

Tagliatelle with beef sausage, paprika, bacon, grana padano.

Tagliatelle after I was done with it.

My sister came home from dinner and crashed, which is where I am headed now.

Tomorrow we spend some more time around Austin. Our goal is to be out of the city just after lunch, but we keep finding things we want to do or see. We will head up into the Hill Country towards Fredericksburg, and see where the road takes us or how far we get at the end of the day.