Travelog - Day 10, Feb.10

Today’s adventure happened under the watchful eye of the 14’ tall Goddess of Liberty who faces south as that was the area of Austin expected to grow into the city centre. Seems the city went north instead, but that’s another story. This statue is an aluminum cast of the original which is now housed in the Texas State History museum. A nd yes she is ‘plug ugly’ with thanks to Kathy in Sugar Land, TX for my recently acquired Texas vocabulary. There was no live model so no need for the female readers to get their ‘knickers in a knot’ (more of a Brit expression). Her features have been grossly exaggerated so that we 'lower level' people would be able to discern some facial characteristics at ground level. One other tidbit worthy of note: the State of Texas flag flies at the same height as the USA one. Check your history for more on that topic in addition to how the new statue got to be there and via whose helicopter.
Another picture of the legislature building was taken to show the coverings for the legislature skylights which were installed some years later when members of the legislature complained of the tremendous heat. Tidbit – construction costs of the building were slightly over 3 million dollars and that was in 1888!

We begin our walking tour of Congress Ave. & E. 6th St,. the main purpose of which is to view commercial architecture from the last 3 decades of the 19th century. Please note that this is not even close to what you need to know about this district. This is the ‘world’ according to MOI.
My first big – oooh! was this storefront. (apologies to the real history buffs reading this. Of course that presumes someone/anyone is reading this self-indulgent account. Both Al and & I immediately said, ‘take a picture for Sean’ our youngest son. I also think of my ‘old’ teaching colleague, Bruce. Personally, I really related to the first Gibson with all sorts of wires etc. hanging about. Bruce would laugh at this when remembering the problems I always had in my multi-media presentations. No one tried or worked harder than I did when showing a ‘too many hour prep’ slide show to the whole school. And no one had more public disasters than I. Of course those days are long gone, but still remain in that portion of my brain that will not allow a ‘delete’.




Here you see the the main entrance of the Driskoll Hotel , a secondary corner entrance and then a rather poor photo of the main entrance. The tiled floor is absolutely magnificent, but nothing compared to the stained glass feature overhead. Apparently some of the stained glass in the hotel does have the Tiffany name, but not this one. No matter, it is incredible.




There are many, many buildings to see and crane your neck at. Upon completing the circle tour we encountered these folks with their placards in front of the legislature.
I’ve been taking pictures of interesting, provocative signs for many years now. This is my ‘catch of the day’ so to speak. I hope you can read it. The second image is perhaps not quite in the same league.
My final image of the day is, what can I say, I don’t know. But at the moment it is the only sight we have had of a Texas longhorn so far and probably the only one we will see in the city of Austin.
And ‘no’ I didn’t get a ride. Pity!