Budget Travel: Austin, Texas

by Kraig Becker on

Summary: Located “deep in the heart of Texas”, Austin is the capital of the Lone Star state and a center for technology and education. It is also an incredibly diverse and progressive community with a rich history and culture that makes it unlike any other place in Texas.

Originally named Waterloo when it was first founded back in the 1830’s on the banks of the Colorado River, eventually the city was made the seat of government for the newly founded Republic of Texas. Following the Republic’s war for independence with Mexico, it was renamed Austin after Stephen F. Austin, who was instrumental in the early colonization of Texas. Since that time, the city has grown into the fourth largest in the state and the 16th largest in the country.

Austin boasts an eclectic nightlife, a vibrant art and film community, more than 200 live music venues, and an interesting mix of cultures. And with an unofficial motto of “Keep Austin Weird”, you know that you’re in for a very different experience when you come to Central Texas.

Getting in: Austin-Bergstrom International is a medium sized airport that offers service by all the major airlines, and several budget carriers, including Frontier, Jet Blue, and Southwest. Cheap, non-stop flights into Austin from most major cities are plentiful and easily obtained.

Driving to Austin is also easy, as the city sits just a few hours south of Dallas and west of Houston, with major highways allowing for easy access. Having a car in Austin allows visitors to see more of the city and escape to the near by Texas Hill Country, with it’s beautiful vistas and quaint small towns.

The city is also serviced by Amtrak and Greyhound, offering two other inexpensive options for getting to Central Texas.

Where to stay: Austin has a wide range of accommodations, from large national chains to small bed and breakfasts, with pricing starting at the low end and stretching all the way up to luxury levels. But travelers on a budget don’t have to skimp on the laid-back atmosphere that Austin is so well known for. For instance, the Austin Motel is a local favorite for it’s retro-cool vibe, and location in the heart of the hip downtown area of South Congress Ave or SoCo as it’s known locally. This family owned hotel has been open since 1938, and offers affordable and unique rooms that often attract celebrity guests.

There are also several good low-budget options available as well, with the HI-Austin ranking amongst the best. This 42-bed hostel costs as little as $19 per night, and is located near Lady Bird Lake, making it a short walk or bus ride to much of the downtown area.

What to see: Austin literally has something for everyone, with a ton of activities going on at tall times of the year. But the city is known as the “Live Music Capital of the World” and music buffs will find plenty to love. On nearly any night, you’ll be able to find bands playing in any number of locations around the city, with places like Stubb’s Barb-B-Q and The Continental Club offering up inexpensive entertainment. Check out AustinLiveMusic.com to see who will be jamming in Austin while you’re in town.

Outdoor enthusiasts will find plenty to do in and around Austin as well. The Texas Hill Country offers great hiking and mountain biking, while the local rivers and lakes are excellent for canoeing and kayaking. Head to Enchanted Rock State Natural Area for great scenic views from the top of a 425 foot giant granite dome that is a favorite of local rock climbers as well.

A visit to Austin isn’t complete without dropping by the Alamo Drafthouse to take in a movie. The Drafthouse is an Austin staple and is consistently named the best movie theater in the country. Watching a newly released film while sipping on beer or wine, then ordering a pizza, sandwich or just the traditional popcorn is a real treat when you have waiters taking your order at your seat. And attending one of their unique special events will leave you wondering why there aren’t more movie theaters like this one. For instance, in the week leading up to the recent release of the new James Bond film Quantum of Solace, the Drafhouse sponsored a week long game of Assasination, culminating on premiere night where they also had a Casino Royale party featuring poker, roulette, and other games.

The list of things to do in Austin goes on and on, even when traveling on a budget. For instance, from mid-March to early November take a walk by the Congress Ave. Bridge to watch more than 1.5 million Mexican free-tail bats take flight into the Texas night. Stop in to Mellow Johnny’s , Lance Armstrong’s bike shop, for a sandwich or expresso, and maybe Lance will drop by to say hello, then head over to Barton Springs to take a dip in the natural pool that is a constant 68 degrees year round. In the evening, move over to 6th Street to for drinking and dancing or stroll through the nearby Warehouse District for a more relaxed environment to enjoy a frosty beverage.

Where to eat: Austin has so many great restaurants, it’s difficult to recommend just a few. But when you visit Texas you’re generally looking for two things when it comes to culinary delights, namely barbecue and Mexican. There are a number of great places to find barbaque in Austin, but if you ask the locals where to go, more than likely they’ll recommend The Salt Lick, which has more than 30 years of experience providing delicious barbecue beef, pork, chicken, and more. You’ll get more food for your money than you thought possible, and no one leaves hungry.

For some of the best Mexican food check out Guero’s Taco Bar or Nuevo Leon. Both offer excellent, fresh food, and are well known for their margaritas, all at a very affordable price.

Through the Gadling Lens: landscapes, cityscapes and seascapes

by Karen Walrond on

Last week, we discussed the best way to take a portrait (since portraits can often add a lot of colour to a travel album) — this week, we get to the good stuff: how to take great scenery shots. At first blush, it would be easy to believe that shooting a landscape image would be pretty much intuitive — just make sure you have the right focal length lens (about 50 mm or less), aim and shoot, right? The truth is, there are a few tips and tricks that can be used to turn your scenery shots up a notch, and help ensure that you capture those memories as accurately as possible.

So, without further ado:
1. Portrait or landscape? Pick one. If I were to choose one of the biggest … well, not mistakes, but … things that people do that can make a shot somewhat confusing, it’s trying to combine a portrait or a landscape. It is an incredibly difficult thing to do to both focus on your partner’s winning smile and get an Ansel Adams-quality image of the Grand Canyon behind her. Remember, there’s no crime in taking two shots: first take a nice tight close-up of your partner’s lovely face (with just enough background so you can sort of tell where the shot was taken, if you must), and then take a beautiful panoramic view of the scenery behind her.

2. Notwithstanding number 1 above, don’t be afraid to use people to show scale. In other words, this is not to say that you can’t have people in your shots; to the contrary, having people in your images can show how immense the structures are, or how vast the scenery.

Now of course, the above shots were taken with the people far away from me, so they were perfect for showing scale. But if the only people around are standing right next to you (like say, your partner joining you at the edge of the Grand Canyon), then here’s a trick: position him at the edge of the shot, and instead of having him face you and smile, have him look out at what you’re taking the picture of. That way, when you print the image, your partners gaze will help direct the viewer’s gaze to the subject of the shot — the vastness of the canyon. If, instead your partner had been smiling into the camera, it would’ve been more confusing for the viewer — do they look at the beautiful smile or the beautiful canyon?

Make sense?

Onward.

3. Before you take the shot, think about why you’re taking the shot. What is it that took your breath away, made you instinctively reach for the camera? Perhaps it’s the height of the buildings, or the vastness of the ocean or the deep blue of the early evening sky. Whatever it is, take a moment to actually compose the shot in your head before you actually aim your camera.

For example: in the shot above, I was stunned by the vibrant colour of the foliage of that tree on an otherwise dismally grey November day. Now, I could’ve taken the image so that the tree was in the center of the shot, or so the foliage took up most of the frame, but when I thought about it, it wasn’t just the yellow that I loved, it was the yellow in contrast to all of the grey around it. So in order to convey the contrast, I decided to place the tree a bit to the left of the frame, in order to capture more of its bland, nondescript surroundings.

In the shot above, what I loved was not just the cobblestone street, or the quaint buildings, but the sense of closeness of the buildings to the road, and the way the road wound down among the chock-a-block houses all the way to the ocean. So I took the shot in a way that would convey this. I have lots of other pictures of the quaint buildings and roads in addition to this shot, so it gives a more complete sense of what it was like to be in that small fishing village.

And finally, I’ve always had a thing for communities built on the banks of a stream (even if the stream is manmade) — I find the water so calming, and it lends to an air of peace in the communities through which they meander. I tried to capture that sense of peace both of the preceding images, the first of Bourton-on-the-Water in the Cotswalds, and the second in an early morning shot on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas.



4. Break the rules. Sometimes, the best shots you get happen when you break all of the rules. So go ahead and shoot into the sunshine, or pick an odd angle to capture your shot, or capture the image at an odd time of day. Experiment a little.

For example, the shot above was taken in the late afternoon — I wanted to capture what the scene looked like while my friends and I were sitting in the lawn of a rented house on the Oregon coast. So I went ahead and shot right into the sun — and captured my friend’s silhouette, so I would remember the moment that the photo was taken.

This shot, above, was taken during a walk in the town of Falmouth, in Cornwall. I looked through the weeds and could see the beautiful estuary below, but I wasn’t tall enough to see over the fronds. So I decided to take the shot anyway, focusing on the boat and scene in the background. The result was this interesting image, which tells as much about what was right around me, as it does the view.

And finally, Big Ben. We’d been sightseeing all day, and I was really hoping to get a shot of the Houses of Parliament — but it was wintertime, and the light had all but disappeared when we arrived. Rather than be disappointed that I wasn’t going to get my daytime shot, I decided to give a nighttime shot a go: Knowing that a flash would be pretty much useless, I upped my ISO to pretty high (around 1000), and found somewhere to steady my camera (the railing along the Thames), and took the shot. I think the result was better than anything I might have taken during broad daylight.



5. Stitch together photographs for a great panoramic shot. Sometimes, the view is so vast and so big, your camera lens won’t be able to capture the entire scene — so consider taking a series of shots, and “stitch” them together to capture the scene. The panorama above, of Bow Lake (about 30 miles north of Lake Louise, in Alberta, Canada) was taken by my husband Marcus on a cycling trip, and is actually a series of individual images that he took with his point-and-shoot, and connected together in Photoshop. If you think you’d like to try your hand at creating your own panorama, here are a couple of tips:

a) Always shoot from left to right (or from right to left). The point is to do the shots in sequence, so that when you upload the photographs, they upload in the proper sequence.

b) Find (or make) a horizon, and keep it constant as you take the shots. If you can use a tripod, that’s ideal, but obviously, you don’t always have a tripod available. Just try to keep the horizon as straight and horizontal as possible as you take your series of shots.

c) Overlap the shots by almost 33% each time you squeeze the shutter. It will make stitching them easier once you upload them to your computer.

As mentioned, Photoshop has a great “stitching” program for creating panoramic shots, but if you don’t have Photoshop (or any other type of photo editing software), gimp.org has free photo editing software that apparently does a great job of “stitching.”

And finally, since we’re on the subject, a word about Photoshop: I find that even more than portraits, landscape and seascape shots can often do with a bit of photo editing. Landscape shots straight out of the camera can sometimes feel a bit flat, compared to your memory of the scene at the time. Don’t be afraid to bump up the contrast or sharpen an image to make the final result a more accurate representation of what you experienced (how I edit images can be found here).

Hopefully this has given you a couple of new ideas for your landscape shots! If you have any questions or comments, as always, please leave them below, or e-mail me directly at karen DOT walrond AT weblogsinc DOT com. I’ll be happy to address them in upcoming posts.

Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can see more of her work at her site, Chookooloonks.
And for more Through the Gadling Lens, click here.

Galley Gossip: A question about why I’m based in New York when I live in California

by Heather Poole on

Dear Heather,

Reading your comments about being on reserve in New York made me wonder; why don’t you fly out of LAX? I know quite a few people at United who commute west coast to IAD, but that’s primarily because you can’t get the great international flying anywhere else in the system and their seniority goes a lot further.

John in MRY

Dear John,

Good question, John! In fact, it’s a question that my own family and friends have asked often. But first I’d like to address the airport / city codes you mentioned in your question for our readers who are not familiar with airline lingo…

Back in 1995, my classmates and I were offered several base choices prior to graduating from flight attendant training. Because the bases were rewarded by class seniority and class seniority was determined by age, which made me one of the more junior people in the class, I only had three real options – San Francisco, Miami, and New York. My plan was to eventually live at each and every base the airline offered. That’s why I took the job in the first place. To travel. To experience new things. To live in different places.

San Francisco: San Francisco would have been my first choice, except for the fact that the base was (and still is) one of the most senior bases in the system. When it comes to working for an airline seniority is everything. It determines what you fly, when you fly, and days off. Not to mention, the cost of living in California was (and still is) expensive for a flight attendant. A new hire back in 1995 only made a salary of $17,000 the first year. And because only a handful of people from my training class were going to San Francisco, all of whom were from San Francisco, I knew it wouldn’t be easy to find a couple of roommates to share a small place in the short four days the airline allotted before we were all off and flying our very first trip. Though I didn’t go to San Francisco, I knew that one day I would transfer there as soon as I acquired a little more seniority and my pay checks were just a wee bit bigger.

Miami: The majority of the people in my training class wanted to go to Miami, whether they had enough seniority to hold it or not, and most of them did not. The base was (and still is) the second most junior in the system. Of course the weather is always nice, the beaches are beautiful, single life, for me, would have probably been a lot of fun, and the cost of living in 1995 was not bad, not bad at all. I remember seeing an ad in the newspaper for a one bedroom apartment near the beach for $500 a month. It seemed like a dream, a dream that I could actually attain as a flight attendant. Miami was the base for me – but there was just one other place I wanted to go to first.

New York: An hour after my silver wings were pinned to my blue lapel, I was whisked away to the airport where I quickly boarded an airplane that flew to New York. At a window seat I sat, and I’ll never forget looking out of that window at all of those twinkling lights down below as we descended into La Guardia Airport. It was a beautiful sight. Nor will I forget freezing my you-know-what off as I stood outside the deserted airport in the middle of December, two large suitcases lying at my feet, with absolutely no idea what to do next. A not so beautiful sight. I chose New York because I just wanted to go to the one base I knew I’d like the least, just to experience it, and then transfer out as soon as possible. Since I knew most of my classmates would get stuck in New York, I figured it’d be fun to experience flying life with all my new friends. As bad as it seemed at the time having to share a small house in Queens with six other full-time flight attendants, two commuters, a Border Collie named Monica, and Boris, a Russian yellow cab driver who lived in the basement, those were some of the best days of my life.

It’s been fourteen years and I’m still based in New York, even though I live in Los Angeles. Here’s why…

Seniority: New York is the most junior base, yet we have, I think, the best flying. Now, fourteen years later, I’m holding pretty good trips, like transcons from New York to the west coast. That’s one long and easy flight. If I were based in LA, a very senior base, I’d be stuck working up and down the west coast, multiple legs a day, and because flight attendants don’t get paid until the aircraft pulls away from the gate, you do not want to spend very much time on the ground, which is exactly what happens when you work multiple legs a day – waiting in the airport between flights, boarding, deplaning, etc. A flight attendant can easily be on duty for twelve hours but only get paid for eight of those hours when working this type of trip. I work a reduced schedule, so I have to make the most of my days at work. That’s why it’s very important I hold good trips in order to be able to drop them.

Reserve: Reserve, to put it quite simply, is hell. There’s is not one flight attendant I know who enjoys being on reserve. When on reserve, except for a few scheduled days off, you are on-call to the company for a month. Because New York is a junior base, my chances of holding off reserve are good. In fact, I’ve actually held off for a year until this month, and now I am just 15 people from holding off again. For me, it’s much easier to commute to work than to be on reserve, and I do hope to be off reserve again soon. Fingers crossed.

Because I love New York – There’s just something about the energy in New York City, an energy I can’t explain, that does not exist anywhere else. The moment I step off the airplane and walk into the JFK terminal, I feel alive, and creative, which is good when you write about what you do for a living. I love New York so much, in fact, that I even enjoy the brief drive through Manhattan in the dark on the way to Newark airport after being called out for a 5 a.m. sign-in on reserve, which has already happened twice this month – two days in a row. Let’s all pray it doesn’t happen again.

And that, John, is why I’m based in New York. Thanks for the question, and if you, or anyone else, have another question feel free to email me at Skydoll123@yahoo.com

Happy Travels,

Heather Poole

%Poll-24962%

Photos courtesy of (Vintage airline poster) www.allposters.com, (New York City) Morrissey

Budget Travel: Minneapolis, Minnesota

by Josh Lew on


Minneapolis. What comes to mind? Prince’s purple jumpsuit, Francis McDormand’s accent in the movie Fargo, the Mall of America and six months of winter.

Perhaps the larger of the Twin Cities (Saint Paul being the smaller) is not on the tourist map, but it often gets props for being a nice place to live. (Forbes called it most affordable city to live well. The Minneapolis suburb of Plymouth was rated the best place to live by CNNMoney).

So it’s a fine place to live. But why visit?

First, there is the food…then the live music, the art, the coffee shops, and, of course, the fact that Minneapolis is second only the New York in number of theater seats per capita.

Bring your coat (and if your ears are delicate, a hat as well) during the winter, but don’t expect ice fishing weather from April to October. That is when the city’s lakes, trails, and outdoor events make it a budget traveler’s dream destination.


Get In
It will soon be cheaper to fly to Minneapolis. Southwest will be launching flights to and from Chicago Midway in March. From Chicago, you can get a connection to any city in the US that Southwest flies. That will drive down airfares to MSP, once a stronghold of Northwest. Names like Megabus, Greyhound and Amtrak are also players in the transit game. Minneapolis sits in the cross-hair made by Interstates 35 and 94. It is reachable by car in a day from virtually anywhere in the Midwest.

Getting Around
The bus and train system is better than average for a mid-sized city, but still far from perfect. This is a driving city, especially if you want to take advantage of outdoor activities. Summer is bicycling weather and most of the urban destinations are within pedaling distance of one another. Buses and the new light rail system both allow bikers to bring their wheels on board.

What to do
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is free every day and often holds special events and exhibits. The nationally famous Walker Art Museum has free admission on the evening of the first Thursday of every month (with plenty of events and activities on offer). The adjacent sculpture garden is open year round, but is mainly a summertime attraction. The Como Zoo (actually in Saint Paul) does not charge for entry and is known for its polar bears and penguin exhibit. It is also free to peruse the art galleries in the growing hipster hot-spot of Northeast Minneapolis (Nordeast).

Theater prices can vary greatly. The Orpheum and Guthrie put on world-class stage productions, but tickets are highly priced unless you luck out in the rush line. There are plenty of other professional theaters and live music venues. These vary in size from a few thousand to a few seats. City Pages (print version is free at pretty much every restaurant, coffee shop and bar in the city) has a complete list of weekly events plus a collection of liberal editorial rants and naughty adverts in back. There is no better source for what happening and what’s cheap each week.

What to do (summer)
An evening stroll around Lake Harriet or Lake Calhoun, capped by a stop at one of the neighborhood bars or cafés in the area, is a pleasant (and cheap) way to spend a few hours. If you are on the prowl, such a trek can easily be seen as a chance to check out some attractive joggers. If that’s too low-brow, there’s the Shakespeare in the Park series during the summer and $2 movies at the historic Riverview Theater near the Mississippi River Road.

Where to Eat
Ethnic eateries line University Ave in St. Paul (from the State Capital to Snelling). These offer a filling, good meal for under 10 dollars. There is a similar strip in Minneapolis on Nicollet Ave. Sandwich shops, bistros, and cafes offer cheap fare throughout South Minneapolis and near the University of Minnesota.

Where to Drink
Nordeast is one of those hip artsy neighborhoods. Though its desirability is growing, there are still plenty of spots catering to the “I’m hip and creative but rather poor” crowd. Lots of these have live music or events on the weekend evenings (and good people watching every night of the week). If you are looking for some fun of the beer-in-a-pitcher variety, virtually any venue on or near the U of M campus will do.

Minneapolis offers a genuinely laid back trip. Cold weather or warm, there is plenty going on. And no, not everyone talks like Francis McDormand in Fargo.

More Budget Destinations on Gadling

There are 261,690 photos of the Eiffel Tower on Flickr. So why do we still take pictures of it?

by Aaron Hotfelder on

Yes, 261,690 photos. Of one man-made structure. If every possible photograph of the Eiffel Tower has not already been taken, we’re probably coming dangerously close to exhausting the limits of human creativity. Same goes for all the hundreds of thousands of photographs of Times Square, Buckingham Palace, the Pyramids, Angkor Wat, and every other tourist destination to which millions of camera-clad tourists flock every year.

Photos of all these places– many of the shots better than anything most of us could take– are on Flickr right now and available for us to download and print out or upload onto Facebook.

But we don’t do these things, do we? After we come back from Paris, we don’t show our friends other people’s photos of the Eiffel Tower, even though many of them are probably better than our own. It seems as if we’d prefer to look at (and show others) inferior photographs of our own creation rather than beautiful shots done by somebody else, even when both photos are of the same thing. But why?

Well, in many photos, we like to stand in front of tourist landmarks as a sort of proof that we were there– the ol’ “This is me in front of the Eiffel Tower” shot. You can’t simply download these photos off Flickr, so it makes sense to take these pictures. But, assuming we don’t have some great photographic abilities, why do we spend time and energy photographing just the Eiffel Tower itself when so many great photos of it are already available?

I think it’s because we get satisfaction when we produce an image, even when it’s (sometimes highly) imperfect. It’s human nature to hold up something we’ve created and proudly say, “I made this. Sure, maybe others have done it better, but this was what I did.”

And others enjoy seeing what we’ve created as well (rather than just where we’ve been), even if it might lack the polish of the work of someone more talented. It’s the same reason your mother was always happier to receive a hideous hand-made card on Mother’s Day rather than a beautiful one that could be bought from the store. (Well, up to a certain age, I guess.)

If we were really only interested in showing people where we’ve been, we’d print out a bunch of photos from Flickr or upload a bunch of stock photography to Facebook. But we’re equally interested in that “I made this” feeling, the one that comes from showing others– and ourselves– how much beauty we can create when we give ourselves the chance.