Austin Trip: Day 2

Hey guys, I left you last after my continental breakfast at the hotel on Thursday morning… After that, my counterparts and I did our conference thing, but you don’t want to hear about that, you want to know about the fun, Austin stuff!

We went to a place called Hot Boiled, which is a Cajun/Creole/Vietnamese fusion restaurant. It was very small, and in a shopping center, but we were pretty happy with the food, I’d say. We started with grilled chicken springrolls with a traditional peanut sauce.

Cut into 6 pieces, we managed to have yummy noms while waiting for the rest of our food. I got a vegetarian rice noodle lo mein with broccoli and celery. It was SO much food, I felt like I ate, and ate, and ate, and there was still a whole plate left over.

After some more conferencing, we decided we needed to make an EMERGENCY BATHING SUIT RUN, and hit the pool. We soaked in the hot tub for a while and then, I realized I had an untapped resource with me!

Laura was a swimmer and swim instructor in high school and college! And as someone who thinks a sprint distance tri might be fun to do at some point, I should learn how to properly swim.

It did NOT go well. haha.

Needless to say, swimming is an art, and one that I had NO idea how to do properly. We ended up at the side of the pool on the steps, because I need to back up THAT far. I mean, I can float and waggle my body parts to propel myself through the water, but a true freestyle stroke, with the right head turns, and actually BREATHING, is definitely hard.

I pretty much spent as much time LAUGHING as I did trying to swim. haha.

After that, we went to the most AMAZING burger place I’ve ever been to, Elevation Burger in Austin on Arboretum BLVD was unreal. We had organic grassfed beef burgers, fries cooked in olive oil, (and most of a hand spun, to-die-for chocolate shake)

One of those amazing chances to splurge while still making a few small choices that improve the experience. It isn’t health food, it isn’t even particularly healthy at all!! It could be worse, much worse… but it could NOT have TASTED better, I assure you. I had a burger with ketchup, mustard, cheese, caramelized onions, and pickle. HOLY YUM.

(I also learned laura-in the center- is a fry dipper, who knew!!??)

Not me, I like my fries doused in only ketchup, thankyouverymuch.