A weekend at Texas – Lookbook and Travelogue

After a (not-so-short) summer hiatus, it feels so good to be back to blogging! The last two months have been a crazy whrilwind with lots of travel and making memories with family and I can safely say that this was one of the best Summers so far 🙂 I have a bunch of travel posts and lookbooks that I want to publish and I decided to start the series with good ol’ Texas!

I’m not at all a city person. In fact, I can hand count the number of cities I’ve been to. Cos 1) I’m not a foodie 2) I’m not really interested in History so I don’t really know what else to do in a city other than eat/go to museums 😀 The exception is San Francisco because of the beautiful hikes and the views surrounding it! I can’t think of any other place that is so beautifully perched next to the bay and that’s one reason it’ll always be so close to my heart! I can go on and on about the beauty of SF but I’m supposed to talk about Texas in this post, so maybe some other day 😀 My girlfriends and I wanted to do a trip together and we took a poll and majority of us hadn’t been to Austin, so we decided to do a weekend trip. I never really had any expectations before going to Austin and I was pleasantly surprised by the food and party scene there! We literally just ate all weekend, switching between Ice-cream and Tacos and OMG the tacos literally blew my mind! It was truly one of the tastiest things to have graced my taste buds! And even though I’m not a huge fan of Ice-creams, I tried some unique and not-so-conventional flavors and that was a great experience too.

The first night we stayed close to the airport at Hyatt place and for the second night we stayed in Hampton Inn and Suites at Downtown Austin since we wanted something close to 6th Street. It was super convenient location-wise and had good amenities. We spent a day at San Antonio and another day at Austin.

San Antonio, Texas –

San Antonio is about an hour and a half drive from Downtown Austin. It was a really hot day in Texas (which apparently is the norm coz only we Californians are spoilt with great weather) so the underground Riverwalk at San Antonio was such a relief! The place itself was so happening with the tourists taking rides on the river in pink boats and Mexican troops singing away to glory at every second restaurant. We strolled around the riverwalk, occasionally stopping to look at all the cute roadside stalls with the signature oversized Texas hats and other paraphernalia. A fellow blogger, Katherine from One Swainky Couple is a local and gave me some great suggestions for places to eat. We had lunch at Casa Rio that’s right on the riverwalk and they had the best chips and salsa I’ve ever had! Our next stop was the Pearl area as we went looking for Lick Ice cream and we were glad that we got lost there as there was a summer fest happening and so lots of people and some kickass Latin music! We called it an afternoon and drove back to Austin for an (exceptionally) fun filled night at 6th Street!

We quickly changed and headed to the infamous 6th street where all the party happens and OMG that was a replica of what my UCSB Friday night walks along Del Playa used to look like! We grabbed some (mouth-watering) Indian street food to eat from a couple of Food trucks and walked all along the 6th street going in and out of pubs as we pleased. My favorite was the Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar where we spent cheering the amazingly talented piano players who played everything from the Video game Mario’s music to the Game of Thrones theme song. Oh and we also grabbed some midnight doughnuts from Voodoo doughnuts and took the dance floor back to our hotel room and called it a night.

For my outfits, I wore this Denim dress that I got from express a while back in the morning and paired it with a statement necklace for some bling and in the night I wore a shocking pink dress from India with some stone detailing near the waistline with my fav Sam Edelman heels (Literally the only pair of heels I own that doesn’t make me want to cry out loud in pain after an hour of walking)!

Denim Dress – Old. Similar here and here

Dress Shoes – Sam Edelman

Downtown Austin –

The next day we strolled around Downtown Austin and caught up with some old friends at Downtown Austin and it was particularly memorable because of the tacos that I had previously mentioned! If you are a vegetarian and if you are at Austin, DO NOT – I repeat – DO NOT forget to stop at Torchy’s Tacos and have their Fried avocado taco and their chips with Queso. You can thank me later 😉 After a heart fulfilling meal there, we walked around and stopped at Amy’s ice cream for a quick dessert pick-me-up and headed to Oasis to spend the rest of our evening before our flight. Oasis is like a mini shopping complex with a bunch of souvenir shops and a huge restaurant and bar overlooking Lake Travis. Since we were all super full, we didn’t eat there but we just sat there admiring the view for a good half an hour before heading to the airport with major “taco” withdrawal symptoms! I wore a summery yellow top (again old from F21) and a pair of white shorts to go with the texan vibe 😀