Austin - Lamberts and Atash at the Bob Bullock

Lamberts is an upscale barbecue restaurant. That said, the food, music, and decor all support this place beautifully.

The inside appears to be an old warehouse. It is open to a 2 story ceiling, with a staircase leading to a mezzanine level. The place is comfortable, with appointments that are elegant without being overstated. The mirrors allow even the chair side guests a view of the inner workings of the kitchen.

Here is the banquette extending down the whole restaurant. We had a 6PM reservation, so the place had not yet filled. At 7 it went kind of crazy. A live band started playing upstairs, and people streamed in, filling all the tables. When we asked for a reservation it was either 6PM or 9PM. This is a popular place!

Again, no food porn. The food was really good. Everyone had some sort of barbecue, though the restaurant also offers grilled meat items. The sides were beautifully prepared, fresh, and delicious (haricot vert with almonds and butter, and asparagus). Lamberts offers local and foreign beers on tap. All were great. This was a really enjoyable dinner. Texas barbecue is always good, but this was very special.

After dinner we went over to the Bob Bullock Museum again, to see Atash, a strangely populated band. The focus is on middle eastern music, but the group is composed of white, black, East Indian, and middle eastern people. There are fiddles, a string bass, a pot drum, a regular percussionist, a sitar, and more. The music is really engaging.

















The crowd was mixed, with lots of families, students, and dogs (as usual). The crowd really got into the music. Several people got up and danced in a middle eastern manner.

Children danced and wiggled all night long. They would run away and play with the new puppy, then circle back to check in with their Mom or Dad.

















Then the obligatory picture of the Capitol from the middle of the street with E admonishing me not to get run over. It's really an impressive building and deserves pictures.

Austin - Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Garden

Another wow! This facility is just plain wonderful. You get a glimpse of what is coming when you see an abstract sculpture out in the parking lot. This is the beginning of a smorgasbord of shapes, sizes, viewpoints, colors, and desert plants, bushes, and trees.

One of the first things that greets you as you enter is a cistern and aqueduct. These are keys to yet another Austin area display that uses water effectively. The site collect more than 10,000 gallons of rain per inch of rainfall into its cistern. That water is used and displayed effectively throughout the site.

As you continue into the site you find a lily pond. Only later do you realize how prolific it is. As we came in we noted dragonflies, minnows, and this turtle. The turtle was growing moss or weed all over its back. Good camouflage!

Just after the pond you are greeted by this pristine spring-like pool. It is so clear it looks like a little gem in the middle of the courtyard.

Then begins the work of this amazing site. Everything is very clearly labeled. I am not really into classifying flowers, etc., but I can appreciate thorough and meticulous work.





















As with other sites we visited, there seem to be a lot of themes being expressed. One of them is size. The site contains everything from trees down to these 1/8 inch flowers.


















Another theme is scarcity. Some plants are plushy, with lots of blooms. Some are quite sparse.

Yet another is color. Whites, yellows, red, purple, green, gold, almost anything you can imagine is here.

Then there is the difference between the woody plants and these succulents.

Then, among both buildings and plants is the idea of shape. In the buildings, this is mixed with viewpoints, which are present all through the site. The designer used viewpoint very effectively to isolate parts of the garden and teach lessons on types of plants and habitats.

The shapes are sometimes conventional, but often abstract and very pleasing.

Sometimes the shapes are sculptural.

Your eye is drawn upward and downward, side to side, from sight to sight. The site seems to generate a lot of energy, even on a 100+ day.

Shade and light are also contrasted here. This grape arbor, matched with one on the other side of a formal garden, give respite to overheated visitors.

Another contrast is between damp and dry. Most of the site is appropriately dry, but the Austin area also has water in lakes and streams. So the site reproduces some flowing stream and damp areas, using its cistern as a resource. Note the frog right in the flow of this outlet, just above the foliage.

Along with the damp, of course, come a variety of animals. As we left the site we got stuck at the lily pond, noticing more and more going on. In addition to the turtle we noticed on the way in, there were plenty of other turtles and many frogs.

There were several baby snakes. They looked like red racers, but who knows. They would come up on the lily pads, then slip into the water and disappear.

Then we noticed their mom cooling off in the shade.

There were lots of insects all over. On the pond there were dragonflies and muddaubers. On the flowers there was a mixture of butterflies, beetles, and bees like this guy.

This is a very spectacular place!

Tonight: we will go to Lambert's for barbecue - it must be good, we had to get a reservation!

Austin - FlipHappy Crepes and Mansfield Dam Park

Around noon time we went down Barton Springs Road to FlipHappy Crepes. This is a business that Bobby Flay introduced to people on his Food Network show. Some local women started this up in a small way in an Airstream trailer, and that's the way they continue.

Their sign is not very obvious and they are a little out of the way, but worth the try!

There are quite a few choices, extended by the specials of the day. All of them are terrific! The dessert crepes are wonderful. We split two between the four of us. These are as good as (or better than) in France!

The service is not terribly quick, but the clientele sit peacefully (except for noise from the building site across the street - more $500K condos) and wait for their orders. They know how good the food will be.

This guys was snorking out his lunch hour while we waited.

There is some good people watching available. It seems to be predominantly moms and kids here, with an occasional dad.

No food porn available on this site. Everything disappears way too quickly for that!

This afternoon we drove out to Lake Travis (north and west of the city - maybe a 1/2 hour drive). Was this going or coming? Who can tell?

This is another Travis County Park - $8 per car. The limestone blocks are big. This little inlet is sheltered from boats and the wind. The park facilities are quite nice, with grills, picnic tables, restrooms, etc. There are shade trees, but one could wish for more shade over the blocks on the inlet. That would be a beautiful spot, but too hot today without shade.

The water was warm, but the wind blows a little hard for floaties to stay close to shore! The sun is pretty strong, so be careful.


















Tonight, a free play ("Beauty and the Beast") at the Zilker Park theater. This ended up a better people watching experience than a musical theater event. The production numbers were good, but individual performances were spotty. In addition, latecomers forced their way into every crack, disrupting the viewing for those who had come early and found good spots. Here is a view of the stage (before it got ruined by newcomers). There are three or so tiers of naturally sloped land to allow a lot of people to watch the musical.

There are lots of pretty babies and young children. This baby's Mom shows the deepset eyes that seem to be common around here.

Lots of dogs are here as well.


















 This girl found the perfect spot in one of the old live oaks on the site. She was there until we left.

Austin - Chuy's, Umlauf Sculpture Garden, Los Lonely Boys concert

This was an interesting day. We started the exploration at Chuy's (the site of the Bush girls problems). This is an old TexMex restaurant that is really busy. We had a 20 minute wait before getting in. The food was great, but the wait outside let us see some things we would not have otherwise.

This guy apparently lives in the gutter. He spent all his time popping up, singing, then ducking down under some kind of guard in the gutter.

The disparity in size between these two dogs just made us laugh.

After lunch we went over to the Umlauf Sculpture Gardens, a short drive down Barton Spring Road. Like some other Austin parks, this one had a focus on water. It started with this hillside cascade at the entrance to the site. The admission is $3.50 for adults here.

The water descends through pools and streams to a lily pond at the bottom of the site. This is quite a relaxing place, with lots of shade and places to sit and think. The sculpture is pervasive and yet not intrusive. It seems that a very thoughtful designer was part of the planning. Note here the lovers in the middle of the lilies.

The site has a fairly religious main focus. Here is a John the Baptist in bronze. Other sculptures range from a medallion to a crucifix to a Pieta.

The materials vary, with some cast stone also, as in this graceful mother and child piece.

The other focus seems to be whimsy. It started with this piece near the entrance.

It continued with a part of the garden that contained only animals. This was my favorite.

Then it continued with this diving boy, which paired whimsy with water at the edge of the lily pond.

I have always loved lilies.

And this lovely creature, too, with her new haircut.

We sat on the patio for a while just enjoying the breezes and views.

We ended the day at the Los Lonely Boys concert. This was one of the free concerts going on all summer in Zilker Park. It was a bit of an adventure. We took the bus down to the park. The traffic was so backed up that it took about an hour to go 3 minutes worth of bus ride. It gave us a chance to hear (without trying) that the large, pale lady in the next seats did not consider herself pale (rather "fair"). She also let us know that as she got older she got hornier, and that she had several people with whom she had "fun". And that she "trained" for the Austin Keep it Weird 5K race. Apparently it was hot here for that race (imagine).

So, the Los Lonely Boys are a fairly local, but well traveled, rock group. The crowd was pretty amazingly big. It was really a family thing. People brought coolers, chairs, blankets, beer, children, dogs (pretty much everything they had in the house). A certain amount of illicit substance was being smoked. The music was really good, but we sat so far away the music was a little indistinct. Good though, enough to get people boogying. I had a barbecued beef sandwich from Salt Lick. It was really good. We should visit.