After spending a weekend in Dallas last March and then this past weekend in Austin, I can honestly say I don't get what the big deal is about Texas.
Dallas was nice, but it seemed like a sleepy city and sort of had an old money feel to it. I liked Dallas, but 1 weekend there was enough for me. It was a good time. The gay scene is small, there are a couple of cool buildings like the Bank of America building. Downtown Dallas is dominated by the energy (Read - oil) companies, Exxon Mobil has several sculptures and buildings named for the company, including a Pegasus statue.
I was really excited about visiting Austin. Austin has really come up in the American urban scene as a fast growing, young city. It hosts 2 very successful music festivals, South By Southwest (SXSW) and Austin City Limits. The very large University of Texas is right there. Everything I heard about Austin was true. It was a very young city that really came alive at night. Austin has a vibrant downtown, again, a couple of cool buildings, but still was a sleepy city. Austin is like a little patch of blue in what is clearly the reddest of states. Austinites really like their city. They feel it's the best city in the state, very similar to what San Franciscans feel about their city. And it is a young city. The gay scene is bigger than Dallas, but it still has a very small town feel to it. (As an aside, I had a GREAT weekend in Austin, but that had everything to do with the company and almost nothing to do with the city).
The feeling I got from both cities is that Austin or Dallas is where you go if you're from Texas, but you don't want to leave Texas. The state itself is HUGE. I had to drive across Texas on my way to California when I drove across the country, and it's like driving up Florida....it takes forever. Both cities were nice cities in and of themselves, but my Texas city visits are over. The only other city I wanted to visit in Texas was Houston, but I hear from other people that Houston is disappointing.
The next American cities I want to visit are Seattle and Portland. I still have to visit San Francisco to visit friends now that I'm back on the West Coast. And of course, the final East Coast city I want to visit is Philadelphia.
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