A Spooky Weekend in Austin, Texas

Austin’s a pretty cool place to visit in October, if no one has ever told you this before.

The capitol of Texas has a lot to offer, and even being there for a weekend, you don’t have time to do even an eighth of it.

Since it's October, our weekend ended up having of a lot of spooky and scary activities. Our trip consisted of plenty of good food, sightseeing, shopping, scary movies, and a haunted house with VERY in-character actors.

From Matt’s El Rancho (their queso supreme is fabulous) to Paco’s Tacos and Via 313 Pizza, Austin offers a lot of unique and interesting foods.

Everything was freshly made, tasted great, and the service we received from all of our waiters/waitresses were incredible. Via 313 was generous and welcoming when they learned it was our first time to eat there and let us enjoy some of the best cinnamon breadsticks I’ve ever tasted (there was no pumpkin in there after all).

While food is always great and always fun to try, the highlights of the trip to Austin was being able to see the Capitol building and the memorials around it. The structure of the building was beautiful, and the different types of memorials, statues, and landmarks made the trip really interesting.

They had a Vietnam war memorial, which always makes me happy to see since my grandfather fought in that war, and the details on the memorial were very intricate, and from other memorials I’ve seen about the Vietnam, I could begin to connect the pieces together of how the memorials showed respective parts of the war, but also how they connected. It was neat.

The Texas Peace Officers’ Memorial was also there, and all the names on the black pillars put into perspective how many people had lost their lives. It was a good piece of reality.

What I was really surprised to see (but very happy to see) was the monument of the Ten Commandments still on display. It’s a beautiful piece of art and the inscriptions remind me how true those commands were back then and how they are still true today. As a Christian, it always makes me happy to see things like this still alive in our culture.

Aside from the trip to the capitol, much of our walking came from the shopping centers in Austin and then, of course, walking through a haunted house. Or, I should say, haunted houses.

The House of Torment was filled with lots of different ways to scare yourself, including 3 different haunted houses, an escape room, presentations, and more. We only did the 3 houses, but that was more than enough for me.

The actors hired for this place were spot on with creepiness and knew exactly who to target (a.k.a. they came after me). The makeup was incredibly realistic and very well done, and the costumes were on par with their makeup.

Very cool to see how well they did the setup, incredibly creepy when you go through the houses and get scared by them.

Even though October is supposed to be spooky season, I am more a fan of dressing up into fun costumes than I am of going somewhere to intentionally scare myself. But, there I was, getting scared anyways. It happens.

I still don’t understand how those guys knew I was so afraid, since most of the time I tried to avoid eye contact, but they always knew. And they always came after me. Even the creepy deranged Mickey with a music box knew. While I’m very proud that I never cried (on the outside), I was ridiculously scared. If you can’t tell from the picture, I wasn’t exactly happy to be there. It was fun to be with the ones I was there with, but it was not fun being scared. But, just as everything does, it came to an end. I only ran out of a room once or twice, screamed a ton, but I never cried and I never fell down (that’s a huge accomplishment, y’all).

Our trip ended about as fast as it came, sad to say, but it was incredibly fun nonetheless. We had great food, great company, and great fun, despite the horror-themed weekend.

Austin is a good place to go if you’re looking for some new food to try, good shopping places, historic monuments to see, and especially in October, a great place to creep yourself out at.

It was a great trip and I cannot wait to go back or see where we go next!