Cringing at the Capitol

 Austin, TX

We didn't take any sefies today

Checking the Texas Capitol Tour off our list

Today we walked up Congress Ave to The Texas Capitol Building.  The website wasn't totally clear on when the tours where other than "Periodically between 9am and 3:30pm".  We decided to just go and hope to catch a tour.  Our fall back was to do a self tour.  

When you make a goal of visiting all of the state capitol buildings you start to learn things about some of them. At some point we learned that Texas has the most impressive capitol building.  When we arrived we looked at it from the outside and said, "Hmm, maybe".  We walked through the metal detectors past guards with giant machine guns.  This caused my first cringe.  What was their plan?  To spray the place with bullets if there is a threat taking out the threat and 100s of other civilians and public servants?  This, I am sure, was The Theater of Security at its highest level.  I witnessed others walking in without going through the metal detectors.  They showed some sort of credential.  They even had people in tow with them so the place wasn't as secure as they were advertising.  

When we got in we saw a board listing the next 2 tours.  They were every 30 minutes so we had a short wait.  We waited in the tour area and talked to 2 men from Turkey.  They were there on business and swung by for a tour.  

Soon the guide walked up and started her spiel.  She asked us to all say where we were from.  There was a nice younger guy in a Cal hat that was from Sacramento.  The guide asked, "Did you graduate from Cal?", He proudly said, "Yes" and the guide proceeded to awkwardly throw shade at him.  It was incredibly cringey and unfunny.  I like rivalry humor but this was so awkward that it wasn't even that.  We were off to a great start!  She proceeded to talk about the formation of Texas and I cringed through most of the talk.  I can't remember everything but this stood out to me.  I have to paraphrase here so no quotes.  The guide said something like, when settlers arrived here they noticed that there were no settlements.  There were people here but they were nomadic and not settled.  The indigenous people were here and some were friendly and some were hostile.  Well yea, they were hostile because their land was being taken away from them because they didn't have a "settlement".  She also asked if we saw the big guns that the guards were carrying.  She mentioned that the legislators were "in session" so additional security was in place.  I didn't say it but I didn't feel safer with yahoos carrying giant guns.  

The tour continued on keeping the cringey theme going. We mostly learned about battles that were fought and won or lost and then at some point they were just too tired to fight so they joined the United States.  She did mention that the Civil War was a fight over slavery so I gave her 1 point there.  

The capitol building itself was just okay.  We had heard it was one of the best but it wasn't near the best.  There were a few elements that were really nice but many of the capitol buildings have those elements and more.  

Like other capitol buildings, this one is undergoing renovations.

The dome is Meh.  It does have a star that measures 8 ft. across.

The Senate chambers are just okay

The seats have a star on them

The House chambers are just okay too

We did like the light fixtures

The door hinges were ornate

The doorknobs have a star on them too

The gift shop offered this Texas flask for when you are in boring committee meetings or out on the town the day before a boring committee meeting.

Is this a canon or a condom?

Higher Ground Bar

After the capitol tour we made our way to Higher Ground, a bar that was voted best happy hour in Austin.  The cocktails were good and the food was very good and reasonably priced.  We realized it was our first time in an actual bar sitting at the bar in Texas because we noticed barcodes on each of the bottles.  Donna wondered if it was for Texas law and I speculated it was for inventory.  Turns out it was for Texas law.  Each bottled was tied directly to the bar for some reason. I guess it is a form of alcohol control.

You can see the barcodes here.

That was it for today.  If you missed the previous post you can find it here.