Austin

Children’s Museum

We visited Austin during our trip to Texas. Even though it was only two weeks ago, it feels like it’s been ages since our visit. It is probably because we did a lot after Austin including flying all the way to Japan. We stopped by in Austin since my husband and I lived there during our pre-kid time and have a lot of good memories from then. Our good friends are still there and we always enjoy visiting them in Austin whenever we get a chance. It was especially nice to see our old friends and let our girls play with our friends’ kids.

During our visit in Austin, our friend, my husband and I took our kids to the Children’s Museum in downtown Austin in one morning. Our kids had a blast. They spent most of the time in a kitchen area, but there is so much more to this three-story museum. It is a great and easy place to take kids for parents. I highly recommend the museum. Every city needs this type of museum, and it would have been so nice if there was a Children’s Museum when we lived in the DC metro area (between 2008 and 2010). The good news is thatNational Children’s Museum is scheduled to open at National Harbor in 2013. That’s exciting!

After the museum, we went to Katz’s for lunch. I have one unforgettable memory at this restaurant. My husband and I used to take turns to plan for our wedding anniversary celebration. One year in Austin I was in charge of planning and I wanted something that would be fun and unique. I booked a bat watching tour at Congress Bridge in Austin. Do you know that Austin is famous for the largest urban bat colony in North America? Over a million of bats come out at dusk from under the Congress Avenue Bridge. The things I didn’t realize at that time was that the sun set was really late in summer and June was a baby season for bats, thus many female bats don’t come out. I was very disappointed as we only saw a small number of bats that night and the tour didn’t end a little past 8:30 pm. The restaurant I made a reservation was 30-minute drive from downtown Austin and by the time we got to the restaurant around 9:30 pm, it was closed. I was devastated since I thought that my plan miserably failed. I was so stressed out that I broke down. Since we were starving and needed to eat, we drove back to downtown and ended up having dinner at Katz’s. Even though the dinner at Katz’s was not what I planned, it was nice and comforting.

We’ve been in Japan and the jet-lag has been really challenging. I couldn’t stay up to work on my photos or blog even though we have an internet connection. I have been pretty bad about checking facebook as well and I feel out of the loop after I left Virginia. I’m alive and having a good time though! I’m now looking forward to having a normal schedule soon…