Family Staycation in Downtown Austin

Last week we decided to take some time away with the kids. It’s so easy to get caught up in work and not give your kids the time they deserve.

With work, there are always deadlines you have to meet, but with kids, there’s nothing guaranteeing you’re giving them enough time.

We like to work half-days on Wednesdays to make sure we give them enough time, but during our especially busy times even that isn’t enough!

Our solution is to take lots of small trips, and you don’t even have to leave your city! It breaks up the normal schedule, knocks us out of our work routine, and get us refocused on our kids.

For this trip, we decided to stay in downtown Austin. We used to live downtown in a condo and loved the walk-ability of the city. We used to walk to the grocery almost every day, hike the Shoal Creek Trail down to Town Lake, and even bike to business meetings. Since moving a little further out, we’ve been missing that lifestyle.

That’s part of the reason we stayed at the Wyndham Austin. It’s just a couple blocks from where we used to live, and it’s in a great area. It’s one of the few areas of downtown that still have houses, grass and trees around. Then you walk a couple blocks south and you’re right in the thick of the city.

The Wyndham Austin felt less like a hotel and more like a condo. It had a full kitchen, washer, dryer, multiple bedrooms and a proper dining table, which made it a lot easier to travel with the kids.

We like to cook instead of eating out a lot, and with the hotel only being a couple of blocks from Whole Foods flagship store, it was perfect.

After settling in on the first day and loading up on groceries, we took the kids to Walton’s Fancy and Staple for breakfast. It’s a little deli off West 6th st. that has a great breakfast and back room everyone doesn’t know about. After the kids were fed and Lee was properly caffeinated, we set off for the Austin Zoo.

The Austin Zoo isn’t like most zoo’s you’ll visit. It’s a rescue zoo that takes in animals that haven’t been treated so well or were owned illegally. We’ve been a few times before, but Noah is finally at the age where’s he’s really into it.

After the zoo we headed back to Whole Foods. Noah has an obsession lately with bacon burgers. He’s obsessed with bacon, and a couple weeks ago I asked him if he wanted to try a bacon burger. He looked at me as if I just offered him cotton candy pizza. As if it was too good of a thing to actually exist. He literally, responded “Dad, you’re jokin!”

Once he realized it actually was a thing, he’s asked me for one almost daily.

I remembered there was a burger restaurant in Whole Foods, but what I didn’t know was that it was all vegetarian. Nothing can quite taste like bacon except for actual bacon, but their version of a bacon burger did the trick, and Noah was none the wiser.

After that we headed back to the hotel, watched a couple movies and hung with the kids.

Emma and Noah had a blast and we got to spend some real, uninterrupted time with them. Little trips away with your kids are important even if you don’t leave your city. Free from distractions, you get to fully enjoy just how awesome they are.