Keeping Austin Weird

To continue our first full day in Austin, we had pizza for lunch at Home Slice on South Congress. It was definitely some good pizza. We ordered a whole pie of sausage, ricotta, and roasted red peppers. You can see that delicious pie on my Instagram. 

After pizza and beer we decided to cool off with some ice cream. Amy's was just down the street on South Congress, but none of the flavors seemed that interesting to us. Our friend knows us so well, we hopped in the car and she took us to a much more interesting ice cream shop called Lick. There were some amazing flavors there - I can't even remember them all. I tried a fig jam one that was just too sweet for me, and I ended up going with a goat cheese, honey, and thyme ice cream for my top scoop and a lemon and lavender ice cream for my bottom scoop. Both were light and refreshing yet so flavorful. 

At sunset, the infamous bats of Austin come out for the night. Instead of stationing ourselves on top of the bridge, our friend gave us the insight to take the Lake Lady Bird trail to under the Congress bridge. From there we watched the bats emerge.

I'm sure our view of the bats against the sky was much better than the bridge-viewers against the water. Although it was smelly from the homeless men's pee or the warm bat bodies, we stuck it out to enjoy the sight.

For dinner, we decided on Lucy's fried chicken which is known for great cocktails and of course, fried chicken. We like to think that our plan was to eat all of the fatty foods in the beginning, but we pretty much indulged during our entire trip. 

I have been on a corn muffin kick lately. Ever since a Fresh Market opened up a block away from my museum, I've been wanting corn muffins and soup every day. These corn muffins had fantastic bits of jalapeno and came with tequila butter for spreading. Best way to start a fried chicken meal.

We got a bucket of fried chicken to split between the three of us and it was topped with strips of pickles and giant slices of jalapenos. The jalapenos just rubbed against the fried chicken skin ever so slightly to give it some heat, but not enough to offend. It was a great technique.

We ended our meal with a smores pie - chocolate, roasted marshmallow, coffee crumbles, and a scoop of ice cream. Definitely were feeling full after this meal, so we headed to our friends house for the night to rest up for the next day.