Austin
Why Austin
Live music most nights, smoked brisket worth the line, and spring-fed water in the middle of the city.
Austin is the capital of Texas, on the Colorado River where the Hill Country meets the prairie. It's a state capital, a college town and a tech hub at once, and it still does things its own way.
Live music
Austin calls itself the Live Music Capital of the World, and on most nights it lives up to the name. Clubs on Red River Street and Sixth Street, honky-tonks and small listening rooms book everything from blues and country to indie rock and Tejano. South by Southwest takes over the city each March, and the Austin City Limits Music Festival fills Zilker Park in the fall.
Barbecue, Tex-Mex and breakfast tacos
Central Texas barbecue means brisket smoked low and slow over post oak, and the best-known pits draw lines before they open. Tex-Mex, from queso to enchiladas, is everyday comfort food, and a breakfast taco is how much of the city starts its day. Food trucks fill in nearly everything else.
Water and the outdoors
Lady Bird Lake runs through downtown, circled by a hike-and-bike trail and busy with kayaks and paddleboards, though swimming isn't allowed in the lake itself. For a swim, Barton Springs Pool in Zilker Park is fed by springs that keep it around 68°F all year, and the swimming holes along the Barton Creek Greenbelt fill after a good rain. West of town, the Hill Country's lakes and rivers make an easy day trip.
The bats
From spring through fall, up to 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats live under the Congress Avenue Bridge, one of the largest urban bat colonies in North America. Around sunset they stream out to feed, and crowds gather on the bridge, along the banks and on the water to watch.
The Capitol and the campus
The Texas State Capitol, built of pink granite and taller than the U.S. Capitol, anchors the north end of Congress Avenue and offers free tours. Just north, the University of Texas campus holds the Blanton Museum of Art and the Harry Ransom Center, and the Bullock Texas State History Museum sits at its southern edge.
Keep Austin Weird
The city's unofficial motto began as a push to support local businesses, and it stuck as a description of the place: murals across town, independent shops on South Congress, and a soft spot for the offbeat.
Questions about Austin
Live music most nights, Central Texas barbecue and Tex-Mex, swimming at spring-fed Barton Springs Pool, the bats that leave the Congress Avenue Bridge at dusk, and an independent streak summed up as Keep Austin Weird.
Spring and fall are the most comfortable. Wildflowers bloom in March and April, and the fall brings festival season. Summers are long and hot, which is when the swimming holes earn their keep, and winters are mild.
Around sunset from spring through fall, from the Congress Avenue Bridge or the lakeshore below it. The colony is at its largest in late summer.
