After a midnight return to our lovely san fran hostel, we awoke at 4am to catch the airport shuttle bus ready to whisk us away to Austin! All was going smoothly throughout the checkout process until we realised we didn’t have our most treasured possessions…the cameras! We rang the hostel to check that there might be the slightest chance someone had found it and handed it in….and there it was, behind the desk all the way back in the hostel, while we had a flight in half an hour-not enough time to go back and get it! Luckily the man on the desk at the hostel had a solution. He called the airport shuttle bus with orders to deliver the camera to our terminal, where Ellie in a green hoodie would be waiting for it. What a star. Sure enough, both bus and camera arrived, and Ellie was halfway through thanking the driver for his kindness, when “9 DOLLARS!” was shouted in her face and a hand thrust out grumpily. We should have known…this is America after all. The journey to Austin, Texas went relatively quickly. We changed planes in Minneapolis, Minnesota, (Mighty Ducks and coach Bombay anyone…?) and then went on to Texas. Our hostel was amazing. There is no other word. Great rooms, great living rooms, tv, a LAKE! (with a pontoon you could dive off), great people, free computers, books, dvd’s, piano, guitar and a load of free bread and cakes. Absolute heaven. We were staying in an area just south of downtown Austin, which took a short while to get to by bus and only $2 for 24 hours. On our first morning, some people already staying at the hostel were going to watch a free mariachi band competition at city hall and invited us along. It was incredible! The competition was looking for the next best mariachi singer and each singer in turn went up on stage to sing with either a backing tape or a full mariachi band behind them, with strings and trumpets and guitars and everything! It was brilliant! What was even more amazing was that these singers looked so old for their age. A girl announced as 12 looked and sounded as though she was in her late 20’s! And a boy announced as 17 had a full beard and a deep resounding bass voice and could definitely have passed for being in his thirties. The brightly coloured costumes were also amazing to see. Afterwards, our group led us to experience the barmy wonderment of ‘Whole Foods’ an uber healthy hippy supermarket with all the organic coconut milk and hemp you could ever wish for. It was quite something to behold. And the ice cream man never tired of giving you free testers of each flavour! Result. From there we went to Waterloo, a huge and famous record shop in Austin that we could have spent whole days in! It supported local artists as well as giving the best recommendations for new acts. We found some amazing new music in there (Band of Horses, Sara Jaffe, Good Old War, Ratatat) and bought our tickets for the Daniel Johnston show happening on the Saturday that we all had been easily persuaded by Andrew from Memphis, to attend. Passion Pit and Tokyo Police Club also played a free show in Waterloo about an hour after we walked in, which was pretty cool. That evening we caught the bus back home and all stayed for hours talking and playing by the lake, watching the sunset.
No comments:
Post a Comment