Austin

Top things to do in Austin

1. 01

   Congress Avenue Bridge - the bat emergence at dusk

   nature wildlife 👍 Popular

   Around a million and a half Mexican free-tailed bats roost in the expansion joints under the Congress Avenue bridge, the largest urban bat colony in North America, and they pour out in a smoke-like column at sunset. They are in residence from roughly March to early November and fly south for the winter; the biggest emergences come in late summer once that year's pups are flying. Watch from the bridge rails, from the grass banks below on the south side, or from a kayak on the water, and get there before sunset because the column can be gone in twenty minutes.

2. 02

   Barton Springs Pool - swim the spring in Zilker Park

   nature wildlife wellness ⭐ Highly recommended

   Three acres of dammed creek fed straight from the Edwards Aquifer, holding around 20C every day of the year, which is bracing in January and the best thing in Texas in August. Grassy banks slope down on both sides, the deep end sits over the spring itself, and an endangered salamander found nowhere else lives in the gravel, which is why the water is never chlorinated. It closes for cleaning one morning a week, and there is a smaller free-flowing pool downstream for dogs and off-season swimmers.

3. 03

   The Broken Spoke - two-step in a real dance hall

   nightlife music culture arts ⭐ Highly recommended

   A low-slung 1960s hall on South Lamar, now hemmed in by apartment blocks that were built around it after the owners refused to sell, with a dance floor at the back, a wall of Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton memorabilia in the front room, and chicken-fried steak on the menu. Beginners' two-step lessons run early in the evening before the band starts, which is exactly how a first-timer should do it. This is the least ironic and most enjoyable hour you will spend in the city.

4. 04

   Franklin Barbecue and the east side brisket circuit - queue for the meat

   food 👍 Popular

   Aaron Franklin's place on East 11th Street turned a trailer operation into the most argued-about barbecue in America, and the queue that forms outside it before opening is part of the ritual; the ordering arrangements have changed more than once, so check how it works before you commit a morning. If the wait defeats you, the east side carries the rest of the circuit within a short ride - la Barbecue, Micklethwait and Terry Black's over near Barton Springs Road - and the honest local advice is that the gap between the famous one and the next few is smaller than the queue suggests.

5. 05

   Texas State Capitol - the pink granite dome and the sunken extension

   history culture arts 👍 Popular

   Completed in 1888 in pink granite hauled from a Hill Country quarry, deliberately built taller than the national Capitol in Washington, and topped by a replica of the zinc Goddess of Liberty that stood there for a century. Walk in under the rotunda, look up through the ring of star-spangled floors, then find the underground extension added in the 1990s, which buries most of the working government under the lawn behind skylights. Guided tours run through the day and the grounds are a pleasant walk in their own right.

6. 06

   Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail - the loop around Lady Bird Lake

   scenic nature wildlife

   A ten-mile ring of crushed granite around the reservoir that runs through the middle of the city, past the skyline reflected in flat water, a boardwalk section built out over the lake on the south-east side, and the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue on the Auditorium Shores lawn. Rowers, paddleboards and rental kayaks share the water, no motorboats are allowed, and the whole thing is the single clearest window into how Austin actually lives. Go at dawn or in the last hour of light, especially in summer.

7. 07

   Barton Creek Greenbelt - limestone pools and climbing walls

   nature wildlife adventure

   A wooded creek canyon running for miles west from Zilker Park, with swimming holes at Campbell's Hole, Gus Fruh, Twin Falls and Sculpture Falls, and bolted limestone walls that give the city a genuine urban crag. The catch is water: after a dry summer the creek can be bone dry and the pools nothing but rock, so ask before you plan a swim around it. Access points sit at the trailheads off the loop road and down suburban side streets, and the Hill of Life climb at the western end is a proper set of steps.

8. 08

   South Congress Avenue - boot shops, murals and the Continental Club

   shopping nightlife music

   The strip south of the river that everyone photographs, with the Capitol dome framed dead centre at the top of the hill. Boot walls at Allens, the neon of the Austin Motel, the i love you so much mural that has its own permanent queue, and the Continental Club halfway down, a low-ceilinged room that has been booking rockabilly, blues and country since the 1950s and still runs early and late sets on the same night. Rents have pulled in national brands at the northern end; the further south you walk, the more of the old strip survives.

9. 09

   Red River and East Sixth - the club districts on foot

   nightlife music

   Two very different nights out sit within a few blocks. The Red River strip on the eastern edge of downtown is the live-music core, with an outdoor stage behind a barbecue joint, a bar with a raised patio deck and a run of small rooms booking touring bands most nights. East of the interstate, the venues thin out but sharpen: Antone's, the club that put Austin blues on the map and gave a young Stevie Ray Vaughan a house band, plus honky-tonks and dive bars with no cover and a pedal steel. The old Sixth Street strip between them is a student and stag-party bar run and a different proposition entirely.

10. 10

    Breakfast tacos - migas, bacon and a foil wrap

    food

    The city's real morning institution, and the one food argument that outranks barbecue: eggs, potato, cheese and something crisp folded into a flour tortilla and handed over in foil. Migas, with fried tortilla strips through the egg, is the local order. Veracruz All Natural started in a trailer and is the name most often cited, Joe's Bakery has been feeding the east side since the 1960s, and Tacodeli's green sauce has a genuine cult. Go early; the good places run out and the queue is longest at weekends.

11. 11

    Blanton Museum of Art - Ellsworth Kelly's Austin

    culture arts

    The university's art museum holds a strong European and Latin American collection, but the reason to come is the standalone stone building Kelly designed at the end of his life: a small vaulted chapel form with coloured glass windows, a black-and-white marble floor and a redwood totem, and no religion attached to any of it. Sit in it for ten minutes and watch the light move. The redesigned plaza outside, under petal-shaped sun shades, is a good place to wait out the afternoon heat.

12. 12

    Bullock Texas State History Museum - the La Belle shipwreck

    history culture arts

    Three floors on the story Texas tells about itself, with a giant bronze star out front and the reconstructed hull of La Belle as the centrepiece: one of La Salle's ships, wrecked on the Gulf coast in 1686, excavated from the mud with its cargo of trade goods and a skeleton still aboard. The rest runs from Caddo and Comanche history through the Spanish missions, the republic, cattle and oil, and the museum has grown more willing to complicate the heroic version.

13. 13

    LBJ Presidential Library - the Oval Office replica and the telephone tapes

    history

    A windowless travertine slab on the university campus holding the archive of a president who left more recorded evidence of himself than any other. There is a seven-eighths-scale Oval Office upstairs, an animatronic Johnson in a rancher's jacket telling the same jokes he told visitors, and, best of all, listening stations of his telephone calls: bullying, cajoling and horse-trading his way to civil rights legislation in his own flat Hill Country voice.

14. 14

    Mount Bonnell - the stone steps above Lake Austin

    scenic

    About a hundred limestone steps climb to a small clifftop park that has been the city's viewpoint since the 1850s, looking down on the dammed river, the cliffs on the far bank and the arch of the Pennybacker bridge upstream. It takes ten minutes to get up and it is the classic sunset spot, so expect company and a parking scramble on a clear evening. The Hill Country starts here in a very literal sense: everything west of this ridge is limestone, juniper and winding road.

15. 15

    McKinney Falls State Park - waterfalls inside the city limits

    nature wildlife off beaten path

    A state park on Onion Creek in the south-east corner of the city, with upper and lower falls pouring over broad limestone shelves, slickrock you can walk out across when the water is low, and shaded trails past a rock shelter used for thousands of years and the ruins of an 1850s homestead. A vast bald cypress known as Old Baldy stands near the lower falls. Entry is timed by a reservation system at busy weekends, and swimming depends entirely on how the creek is running.

16. 16

    Circuit of the Americas - the Grand Prix track

    adventure culture arts

    A purpose-built Formula 1 circuit on scrubland south-east of the city, opened in 2012, with a blind uphill first corner that is one of the great modern racing sights and an observation tower over the infield. It hosts the United States Grand Prix each autumn and a motorcycle round besides, and the rest of the year it runs track days, karting and stadium concerts on the amphitheatre stage. Race weekends dominate the city's hotels, so check before you book anything in October.

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