Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Four Seasons at Austin

Arrived in Austin, TX today; this is the first time I have set foot in the state capital of Texas, which also claims to be the Live Music Capital of the World. Austin, to us techie types, is also known as the home of Dell.

Four Seasons AustinThe Four Seasons on the banks of the Town Lake oozes class right from the sandstone lobby to the rooms (mine had a great view of the river and the setting sun). And it is only a few blocks away from 6th street, the heart of Austin's nightlife.

Unfortunately, I was too tired to stay late; I also had an early morning meeting; so I downed some Guinness Stout at an Irish pub, and walked back to my hotel. Four Seasons Austin The pictures here are of my hotel room and the view right out of my window. But perhaps the area's strangest attraction is the nearby Congress Street Bridge. The bridge is home to North America's largest urban bat colony and in the late evenings you can watch almost 1.5 million of them take flight. These bats can consume upto 30,000 pounds of insects in a single evening; residents who initially fought to eradicate the bats, backed off when they found mosquitoes become nearly extinct on the lake, thanks to their neighbourly bats!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

hi,
read all ur blog entries.
seemed very interesting and kept my attention :)
Look forward to reading some of your travel tales, and blog myself too ;)...steven

Shantanu said...

Steven, All you need to do is create a new Blogger account and get started. Good luck!

Yuri said...

sahi .. interesting posts .. looks like u hvin a lot of fun like always :D ... i was wondering why there wasnt any activity here and all of a sudden we have a tsunami.. cheers

Anonymous said...

Shantanu,
Hi, you are really going places. I think, you need to take up golf to go along with these travels. Golf courses in most of the places you have travelled are really picturesque. I would love to hear about them. So long.

Sandeep Tawde

Anonymous said...

That indeed is a lovely picturesque view from your hotel room. I bet you would not prefer attending meetings at day time, in Austin. The story of the bats too is very interesting.

Shantanu said...

Thanks for all the comments!

Yuri: tsunami, because I write these out only when I have time, usually at the airports.

Sandeep: Well, golf is not my thing (yet!).

Romi: Yeah, isn't that fascinating! Apparently, it all began with an inadvertant renovation at the bridge in 1988 with inadvertantly created nooks that the bats liked!