My last entry last week was about a restaurant/pub crawl from East Austin to Downtown. This week we began at the Triangle at Sago and walked again to Downtown. The group was a little larger with some different participants. Randy was the organizer again. I also added another new experience. I took a Car2Go to the starting point. I have been a member since inception but had not actually made use of a car yet. It worked out great. There was a car not far from my house and there was car sharing parking at the Triangle. Worked perfect.
So, we all met at Sago at 6 PM. We started with an some guacamole and ceviche. The chips and guac where good but I was not crazy about the ceviche. The ceviche had too much calamari. Not my thing. Since we were at a Mexican restaurant, I started the night with Dos XX. One lesson learned from last weeks crawl was that we had to move on quicker. So, one beer and it was time to move on. It was decided that we would take Guadalupe instead of Lamar to head downtown. The next stop would be Nasty's.
It was a good walk, about a mile. Felt like we were back in college again. The place was empty but it was only about 7PM. We ordered drinks and got change for the pool table. The women took a seat to talk about whatever they talk about. We played pool. I went with a St. Arnold Lawnmower. Randy was very excited that they had Hoegaarden on tap. This place had a great selection of beer on tap. The bartender has been there for 26 years. Now this is a great neighborhood bar. Definitely will have to come back. Time to move on.
Next we continued down Guadalupe stopping at Madam Mam's for a bite to eat. We needed food. We ended up ordering Shrimp Spring Rolls for everyone as well as 3 different Pad Thai... chicken, tofu and shrimp. The Campus Madam Mam's is my favorite. The food was tasty as always. I had only had the Chicken Pad Thai in the past so this was my first tasting of Shrimp Pad Thai. It was great, very smokey tasting. This was a short stop and it was time to move on to the next place. We decided to head all the way down to 6th Street and get drinks at Opal Divines.
This was a long walk. But, the buzz from the previous drinking was now wearing off from the addition of food. We were starting to get tired from the walking. The heat was also getting to us. By the time we made it to Opal Divines, I was ready for another beer. I should have kept better notes during the walking event because, I don't remember what beer I had here. We hung out for about 30 minutes and enjoyed the cool A/C and conversation. We lost about half of the group. People had kids to get to, etc.
The remainder of the group continued on to our final destination, The Mean Eyed Cat. This is where last weeks Crawl ended but this time we made it inside for a drink. I had never been here before. Great Bar! Good beer selection, good vibe and good music. Since I had tasted the Hoegaarden at Nasty's, decided to order one here. It is not on tap but the bottle was good and cold. Again, we hung out and visited and listened to music. It was early by drinking standards, 10:30 or so but after 4 miles of walking in the heat and 4 hours of time, we were all ready to call it a night.
Each time lessons are learned and the adventure gets better. I really enjoyed this outing. We are talking about the next one starting at Hula Hut and walking East to Downtown. Hopefully, we will wait until it is not quite as hot. Either way, looking forward to the next Restaurant/Bar Crawl.
Doing my Part to Keep Austin Weird,
Alan
