First Weekend

Our first weekend as residents in Austin began Saturday morning at the Sunset Valley Farmer's Market in the parking lot of the Toney Burger Center in the southwest part of town. When we visited last December we had gone to the Austin Farmer's Market on 4th & Guadalupe and we wanted to compare the two.

While Sunset Valley is much larger, it is also much busier. To us it did not have as good of a feel as the downtown market. The quality of the produce and meats looked to be similar, as did the prices. While we like the idea of buying local and supporting the farmers directly, we still find it hard to pull the trigger because of the increased cost. We bought some golden zucchini, mushrooms and sweet onions and the total was well over ten dollars.

While we were in the area we decided to check out the Central Market in the Westgate area. The produce looked just as good or better and even here at what people like to refer to as 'Central Markup', the produce was cheaper than at either of the farmer's markets. The rest of the store was setup a little too windy for my tastes with a lot of dead ends. I may be just be an old school shopper but give me my standard supermarket grid system please. It looks like our supermarket of choice will be the Randall's on Bee Caves.

Our first weekend was stuffed full of shopping expeditions. We located our local Target, Home Depot, Target, Kohls and of course the nearest mall. It turns out that the very nice Barton Square Mall is about 2 miles from our new home, not too bad when we were used to driving 20-30 minutes to get to a mall back in New Jersey.

We also ventured north to our nearest Ikea which is in Round Rock and then we swung around to the northwest part of Austin and found a Rooms To Go. Here we found and ordered our new sofa which will arrive on Tuesday.

Thankfully, shopping wasn't the only thing we accomplished this weekend. We also found time to walk the Town Lake trail and watch the bats. Sunday evening we went to the Long Center and watched the free concert on the lawn. Every Sunday the Austin Symphony puts on a different show called Concerts In The Park. A great way to end the weekend.