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Austin, TX (Pop. 1.6m)
These photos were taken from a series of years from 2003 to 2007. My sister lived in Austin from 2003 to 2014 and my mother moved from San Diego to Austin a couple of years later and still resides there. Austin’s sister city is Adelaide in Australia (where I currently reside) and in many ways, quite similar. See the Adelaide article.
Austin is a bit of special place and quite different from the other Texan cities in terms of being far more liberal and cosmopolitan. In fact, those who live here consider themselves Austinites more than they consider themselves Texans, although they are fiercely proud of being a Texan as well.
Austin has a fairly variable climate but errs on the side of warm, especially in summer where temperatures can stay around 40 degrees C with high humidity for several days at a time. My pictures usually show Austin during Christmas time, which is usually at its most pleasant with temperatures quite often in the low to mid 20s with a nice fresh breeze. However, the weather can change drastically, and overnight one Christmas, the temperature dropped to below zero and severe icing of which I’ve never really seen before, covered every surface conceivable. There’re a few photos of this towards the end of the article.
Austin’s downtown is fantastic with a wide variety of trendy coffee shops and bars. And don’t forget, Austin’s got great live music; for example, the annual South by Southwest festival. Austin is also littered with really good independent shops from video stores to coffee shops.
Enjoying good Mexican food or going to Austin’s infamous Salt Lick BBQ (all you can eat brisket and sausage cooked over an open-fire pit) is a great experience here. If you get too hot, it’s great to kayak on Lake Austin and take a dip. Then if you’re up to it, do a pub crawl downtown.
I guess the only thing which is missing is the seaside, but you just can’t have everything!