Food
Dirty Martin's Place
Longhorns have been eating here for close to a hundred years. It opened in 1926 as a little cafe with a few bar stools and earned the name from the dirt floors it actually had. Order a large OT with grilled jalapeños and onions, hold on tight, and get the chili cheese tots with house-made chili and queso.
Scholz Garten
Opened in 1866, when Austin had about 4,000 people in it, making this the oldest bar and restaurant in Texas and the oldest beer garden in America. More legislation is said to have been done here than in the statehouse. Order a big stein and the Piggy Smalls, a bratwurst under spätzle and beer cheese.
Culture
LBJ Presidential Library
Walk in and you are looking at the Oval Office as Lyndon Johnson kept it, most of the furniture the real thing, down to the telephone on the coffee table. Behind the exhibits sits an archive of more than 50 million pages. Do not miss the moon rock. And say a quiet thank-you: LBJ is the reason PBS exists.
Culture
Denius Athletic Hall of Fame
You cannot run out to the 50-yard line at DKR, but you can walk in here and stand among the hardware: more than 800 conference championships and 66 NCAA national titles. The one that stops people is Earl Campbell’s Heisman, the real one, sitting out in the open where you can pick it up.
Harry Ransom Center
Anyone who loves art or the creative process should step inside, but the two things that stop you cold are both at the front door: a Gutenberg Bible from around 1455, one of only five complete copies in America, and the world’s oldest surviving photograph, captured on a sheet of metal.
Culture
Texas Science & Natural History Museum
Recently reopened in the middle of the 40 acres, this one is for anybody who has ever wanted to stand under a dinosaur. It is dinosaur bones and the remarkable animals of Texas, a short walk from the Tower. If you have kids with you, start your day here and let them run.
Blanton Museum of Art
One of the premier art museums in Texas, and it starts messing with you before you are properly through the door: the first piece vibrates and shifts depending on where you stand. Inside runs everything from ancient Greece to the modern era, including one work that fills a room and invites you to touch it.
Outdoors
Pease Park
Austin’s first public green space, and it has a new resident worth crossing town for: a giant troll built almost entirely from recycled materials, tucked in just off West Campus. She is all about water conservation, so pour out a little water as an offering. The seed-pod playscape is excellent for kids.
UT Tower Austin
Forty acres is what the University of Texas was in 1883. It covers more than 400 now, with the Tower standing guard over all of it. Ride to the observation deck and the whole city opens up beneath you. You will also find patched bullet holes from the tower shooting, a scar the campus has chosen not to hide.
