I never thought I’d be part of something called a “tweetup” but last Friday I found myself traveling to Austin, TX to take part in one… How did I get there?  Well, I often participate in Twitter on travel chats and through that eventually connected with three 3 people that I enjoyed “chatting” with via Twitter.  The idea came up that maybe we should meet up at some point.  Since the 3 of them had Texas connections and 2 of them lived there, we decided to plan a weekend in Austin, TX.  Since I have good friends there, I figured I could see my new friends and my old friends in one weekend.

Getting There

Getting there was challenging as I wanted to stick to my main airline and there are no direct flights.  Also, as I had been traveling a lot recently, I wanted to make sure I could make a stop at home before continuing to travel after the trip to Austin.  No worries, a little fingerwork yielded a good itinerary at a reasonable price even if with a very tight connection in Memphis on my way to Austin (54mins).  The connection was perfectly fine but then the flight to Austin got delayed 1.5 hrs which pretty much killed joining folks that night.

One Sick Puppy

Unfortunately, I was starting to get sick when I flew to Austin and that got worse over the weekend.  I missed the evening tweetup events and that was a real bummer.  But Saturday I did get to be with these new friends, now not just “online friends” and we got to explore a little bit of Austin.

Austin in One Day

The day started with breakfast at one of the food truck parking lots on 1st St.  A taco place and a doughnut one were the choices on the one we settled on – and I was keen on getting a big ole loaded donut!  The donut took a good bit to be prepared but it was loaded with fried bananas, cream and the donut itself.  MAJOR sugar overload!

We decided to walk around that part of town and then proceeded to South Congress to walk around the shops.  People were out and about that day!  It felt like maybe this was the first spring day after a long winter but this was mid-January.  Eventually we made it to Allen Boots.  I wsan’t looking for a pair of boots but did see a belt I really liked and since most of my belts are run-of-the-mill boring, I went for it.  What a great way to add Texas to my “wardrobe” without it having to be a t-shirt!

We decided it was a good enough time to head out to Driftwood, TX to eat some BBQ at Salt Lick (www.saltlickbbq.com).  (After returning home from the trip, I saw the place featured in a Top Chef Texas episode.)  The place is massive and even has a winery.  While we waited 45 mins for our table, we sampled wines which were pretty good.  I especially liked their Brut.  The place is chop-chop, meaning, all business.  They serve you very fast and they don’t seem to want people lingering at the table (based on a posted sign).  But they were very friendly so no complaints here.  Based on the amount of people wanting to eat there, I am glad people didn’t linger before WE were seated!  The foot was great – I had the brisket and sausage and I can say, hands down, the sausage were far better.  They had a slight sweet taste that I enjoyed.

After Salt Lick (and a group picture in the parking lot), we drove back into town to walk around the Capitol grounds and take various pictures.  At that point, I started feeling the cold getting worse so I was not able to linger much and continue on for drinks and dinner which means I missed out on more fun with the group and on checking out the Four Seasons where 2 of them were staying.  I got some meds at the hotel store and basically slept through the evening, night and a good bit of the morning before my local friends picked me up around 11.

Tweetup: Thumbs Up or Down?

Not sure how other “tweetups” go but this group was a phenomenal group of folks!  The folks were in real life as I had thought they were from our Twitter chats.  I hope their blogs about the tweetup do the weekend better justice (especially since they can talk about the happy hours and dinners that I missed) and I can’t wait to read them!

I am very glad I went for it and I look forward to another one of these with these folks and perhaps other Twitter friends we have met over the last year through our travel chats.