“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” - Lao Tzu
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Now, I’ve been to both San Antonio and Austin before, and I remember quite well that I wasn’t a huge fan of San Antonio but I loved Austin. My original plan was to go to Austin for Cinco de Mayo, but several people I mentioned that to said I should check out San Antonio’s festival, so that’s what I did. First thing in the morning I headed into San Antonio, found the first parking spot within a mile of the market square and limped my way into the city. Oh, I felt awful, my knee wasn’t in screaming pain, but just uncomfortable enough that it was very difficult to walk. I made my way to the Market square district and found somewhere to sit down in the park, I got bored. So I walked into the market square and sat down there, wasn’t much happening there.

Eventually I found myself in the Main Plaza listening to a Mariachi band, and that was after I had hobbled along the river walk for a while, and wandered around downtown a bit. The mariachi band was extremely boring, not because of their music – I enjoyed the music when they actually played, but they’d play for about 45 seconds and then take a 15 minute break. I sat there for about three songs of less than a minute each and that took up the better part of an hour, and there wasn’t a very large crowd so I wandered off back to the Market square.

Then I found the perfect pitch for some busking, it was a stage area in front of a nice cafe. I didn’t go on the stage, rather I sat in front of the stage directly in front of a row of benches. People would sit on these benches to rest or eat their lunch and I would have a captive audience for a short while. Forest was not into his frisbee at all, but I bought him a squeaky stuffed hedgehog from wal-mart, and he was excited for that! Yet, he was still only willing to play for a few tricks. Enough to impress a high school spanish AP class (they tipped relatively well and were full of questions), and a number of families and older folks. Again I ran into the same road block, Forest is not the puppy he used to be and he’s not very much into this performance thing. Though we have great fun, and I’m loving it, the namesake of this website isn’t doing very well.

After a while the pedestrian traffic slowed down, I’m not sure where everybody went, but so far this San Antonio Cinco de Mayo Festival thing was a bit overrated. So I left, the Austin block party sounded much more intriguing than whatever was going on here. Maybe I was in the wrong place at the wrong time (I don’t quite understand how that could be, May 5, in San Antonio – everybody had said that was the place to be), yeah there were quite a few vendors and people, but not much celebration going on. Austin on the other hand, once I found a place to park, is an incredible city. Every bar had a celebration with live music, I wanted to check them all out, but first I had to find the block party.

I don’t know what band was playing when I got there, but they were soon replaced by Brownout, an amazing local band. There was several hundred people smashed onto second street, all drinking margaritas and Tecate. Forest had stayed in the van to take a nap, but on looking around seeing the several other dogs at the party, I knew I should have brought him. I would have never thought that he’d be allowed past the front gate. But that’s fine, we spend nearly every waking moment together, we can handle a few hours apart.

After the music was over, I checked out the local music scene in a few bars, and in all it was quite enjoyable. A perfect night for a night out at the bars, listening to good music hanging out with good people. I distinctly remember enjoying Austin the last time I was here, and now I remember why, it is a very enjoyable city, I think I’ll hang out here for a few days anyway.

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