An Austin Institution

We started our Saturday with local coffee at Once Over coffee. We grabbed breakfast tacos at the corner taco truck for our long wait in the Franklin BBQ line (more on that in the next post...).

Our friend knows us so well and especially appreciates food just like we do. She brought us to the flagship Whole Foods which I believe is bigger than the closest Walmart that we have in Florida. It's amazing. This is how Whole Foods everywhere should be. It's seriously a department store/theme park. I can't decide. We visited three times and I enjoyed it every minute!

This Saturday morning we started the day at the Whole Foods for mimosas instead of at a restaurant. Yes, this Whole Foods has a bar. One of our first visits, we all got glasses of wine and shopped while sipping a rose for summer. This time, we took a seat at the quiet bar - only tourists drink before noon. 

Among the great things that this Whole Foods has includes that wine bar, a beer cave, a taqueria, a candy island, a coffee bar, and even a loft area over looking the store for customers who want to eat their food before bringing it home. One of the things that this Whole Foods does is takes the ends or small pieces of cheeses and wraps them to sell for three dollars. I wish my Whole Foods would do that! It would be a great and easy way to try all different kinds of cheeses and to put together a small cheese sampling board for two. I will have to talk to my cheesemonger about this.

This flagship store also has an old cigarette vending machine turned art vending machine. It was actually very cool and we bought two different pieces of wood art. There were other art pieces to chose from like jewelry or mixed media and you didn't really know what to expect from the artist listed. I really adore the mid-century look of this machine. Kind of wish I could have one in my house dispensing chocolates or cheese! 

After our lovely Whole Foods trip, we quickly stopped by the downtown farmer's market. You all know by now how much we love farmer's markets - I mean, we got married in one. However, this one actually has many locally sourced products. Our farmer's markets in Florida are quite lacking and source many of the produce and products from other states. 

I have really grown to adore the Austin downtown skyline. I was never one for skylines because I was raised in NYC and nothing compares to Manhattan. The Orlando skyline never did anything for me, and Paris is so centralized I barely recognized any buildings besides the out of place Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur. However, there is something poetic about the Austin skyline - it has great movement like notes on a clef. 

The Frost Bank building was one of my favorite buildings. It is said that it was designed to look like an owl at certain angles and much of our families know that I adored owls when I was in high school. Owls were always so studious and mysterious, my angsty high-school self could relate to that back then. 

In keeping Austin weird, we not only came upon owl-like buildings but also a couple of people going on a ride to brunch on their horses. We of course stopped to stroke the gorgeous horses, especially after noticing that one of them had the most gorgeous blue eyes. 

Everything in Austin is locally sourced from the soap to the jewelry. You couldn't find t-shirts made in China even if you tried. I really adore that about Austin, and so did my stomach. Every dish and ingredient was made locally and was delicious. That's one thing I will miss about Austin, that there is practically no processed food in sight.