Austin 2013 (part 3)

so, here are part 3 of my Austin trip photos. don't worry, there's only one more to go after this, which I will be posting tomorrow! during our time in Austin we became regulars at several places that were super close to our motel - and by regulars I mean we went there pretty much every day! so I thought I'd share a few of them, just to give you a little insight into what we spent most of our time in Austin doing, which is basically eating and drinking....

Jo's coffee was literally next door to our motel, and thank god for Jo's is all I can say. most days started with us picking up a giant iced coffee at Jo's to drink on the walk to Magnolia Cafe for breakfast (the cafe was about a 10 minute walk away, but even early in the morning it was HOT out!) the coffee was yummy, it was reasonably priced, the staff were so friendly, and we probably got 2-3 coffees here each day!

 also this is the wall to the side of Jo's, and seeing it every day made me smile - best piece of graffiti ever (ignore how pale my legs are, this was taken on our first day in Austin!)

 on the opposite side to our motel, and slightly down the road is Home Slice, the best pizza place EVER. it's super thin, with yummy toppings, and you can buy by the slice meaning you can mix and match. it's really good value too, and fills you up. no wonder this place got so busy in the evening - in fact it gets so busy some evenings that people would park up and just get the pizza and sit outside on the hood of their car eating!

inside you could sit at the 'bar' and watch the pizza being made which was fricking incredible - this dude was throwing the hugest bits of dough around and stretching them out till they looked like they would break. I never knew pizza making involved so much co-ordination!

 aaaaah Amy's, where do I even begin? this ice cream parlour was directly opposite our motel, which obviously meant we had to go there every single day, right? it'd be rude not to. not only did it have the cutest signage all over, Amy's serves up incredible ice cream, with an almost limitless number of combos. it's kind of like Coldstone (if you have ever been there in the US) in that they scoop your ice cream and then kind of chop in whatever add ins you want. my personal favourite was kahlua ice cream with cookie dough, or coffee ice cream with Reese's peanut butter cups. YUM.

 oh you know, just hanging out at our local ice cream place, taking some photos...

and of course how could I forget, our wonderful motel. we seriously had no idea where it would be best to stay in Austin, but loads of review sites recommended the Austin Motel. we assumed it would be too pricey for us seeing as it had such rave reviews about it's location, but it turned out to be one of the cheapest places we'd looked at! it's everything you'd want from an American motel, and so much more. we had the best stay here, a lot of which was thanks to the excellent location, and the SWIMMING POOL which pretty much saved our lives when the temperature was almost hitting 40 degrees celsius!

 pretty much every day involved sitting by the pool to cool off at some point - man Texas is one flipping hot place