Downtown Fun

Last Saturday ended up being one of those very fun evenings that you didn't plan on! Well, part was planned, we'd known for awhile that Carolina would be singing with her school choir at the Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin. The Driskill is a an Austin icon that was built in 1886. It's become known worldwide for it's status as a luxury hotel and it's ghosts. Yes, it's ghost, it has been featured on the Travel Channels Worlds Most Haunted Hotels.This year they're doing a 12 days of Christmas thing where every night they have something special in the lobby, some local singers and bands and on Saturday they had Sommer Elementy School Choir and later the Round Rock High School choir sing in the lobby.
Now, I'll say this; I understand what they were trying to do, and it makes sense. A beautiful hotel lobby, decorated for Christmas, a restaurant and bar right off the lobby filled with guests, lets fill the air with adorable children singing carols. Here's the problem: I am 99% sure that none of the guests and restaurant patrons could see or hear anything with all parents crowded around the kids, iphones in the air recording and taking pictures of the whole thing. See evidence below;

There had to have been on average 2 people per kid, but then some, like Carolina had 5 adults there just to see her (2 sets of parents and a family friend). It was a sea of people circling a group of kids, and you couldn't see the kids.
And I get it, we were doing the same thing. The kids are cute, dressed up and singing Candles in the Window, so yeah, this needs to be recorded for to have to remember you sweet baby by when their tatooed, breaking curfew and denting your car. It just couldn't have been as pleasant as the hotel had hoped for all the people sitting in the cafe area in the lobby or trying to get through to weddings and other events being held there.

Anyway, we were excited to see the kids sing and had fun getting dressed up and going downtown. The kids sang for thirty minutes and they were adorable and sounded great. Afterwards we got some great pictures taken in the beautiful lobby by the Christmas tree.

After the singing and pictures Carolina headed back with her mom and stepdad so Isaac and I decided to walk down sixth street a bit and get a drink before heading home. We had wanted to go to the Library, but we realized it was only 6pm and many of the bars weren't even open yet so we stepped into Maggie Maes, which was open and I was delighted to see my favorite locally brewed beer, Austin Amber, by the Independence brewing company on tap.
We sat and chatted and used the wifi to upload some pictures to Facebook, and ended up chatting with the bartender a bit. He was a big guy with a Boston accent who, when we said we'd been at the Driskill, started telling us about the bartender there. An old guy born next to the Guinness brewery in Ireland. He made us promise to pay him a visit next time we were in the area and hear some of his stories.

As we left the bar and started heading for the car, I remembered that the Christmas tree in front of the state Capital was to have been lit that night. I knew there would be some singing as well, but as we headed down Congress toword the tree I realized there was much more than a few carolers, there was a whole parade moving up the street! It was great, there was live music playing a street corners, Starbucks was handing out free hot chocolate samples, and there were kids crafts and activities inside many of the store fronts! The parade featured a marching band, people on stilts, people on bicycles covered in Christmas lights and a Santa with a cape covered in lights! So very cool and very Austin!
Finally we made it up to the tree and it looked great in front of the Capital, we took some pictures and wandered through the market that had sprung up before heading back to the car.

It was still early enough to head home and enjoy our holiday viewing of Love Actually, my favorite Christmas movie and enjoy an the rest of the evening at home. It was a nice quiet rest of weekend, the last we'll see until 2012!