Cloud 9 Living: Austin Downtown Food Tour - Review ~ Planet Weidknecht

11/1/12

Cloud 9 Living: Austin Downtown Food Tour - Review

What would you like to do that you've never done before? Drive a race car? Go on a private yacht for a dinner cruise? Fly an airplane? Oh, you've already done all that? Maybe you'd like to give someone the gift of a lifetime! Cloud 9 Living can help you with that! It's so easy to log onto their website and give a gift certificate to someone who deserves something wonderful.

Your lucky gift recipient will receive your gift, via email or regular mail, and have the opportunity to log onto http://www.cloud9living.com to choose which experience they want and in which city they want to experience it! What a fabulous Christmas gift for your parents, your college graduate, or a special friend. To celebrate my birthday, Cloud 9 Living sent my husband and I on the Austin Downtown Food Tour!

Our tour guide from Austin Eats Food Tours met our tour group in the marketplace downtown. The three hour walking tour took us to some of the "classic" places to taste foods uniquely Austin. He was full of great stories, interesting facts, and wonderful humor.

We tasted sausage biscuits with gravy in the market, then sampled chocolate beans smothered in chocolate! At each stop we learned a bit about the food, how it's made, and a bit of it's history.

It was a little chilly when we started out at ten in the morning, but it was sunny and warmed up as we walked. Since I'm seldom downtown during the daytime, it was interesting to see the city in a different way.

Austin is well known for being eccentric and the buildings we passed ranged from unique architectural designs to unusual paint jobs (like the asteroid video game design below).

Hut's Hamburgers is one of the oldest buildings in Austin and has been visited by many famous people. We sampled their hamburgers and onion rings, while we listened to interesting stories told by the owner.

At another place, we drank a Moscow Mule and ate a plate of Eggs Benedict. I was starting to get full, but we had many more places to visit. It was a good thing we were walking!

We tasted sweet bread covered in cinnamon at a bakery and I realized I wasn't exactly keeping to my diet, but a Cloud 9 Living experience is something fabulous that you really need to fully immerse yourself into!

I tasted my first ever iced coffee at a hot dog place and although it tasted okay, I decided my husband's special coffee blend is still the best I've ever had. And I prefer hot coffee because iced coffee is just like coffee that sat on my desk too long!

I also had a Pink Licorice Twist, a very sweet vodka drink, which was pretty good. It started out a bit too sweet, but the taste kind of grew on me. It probably helped there was alcohol in it.

We ate Chicago-style hot dogs in the heart of Austin, one dressed up as a chili dog and the other with everything but the kitchen sink (that's what they call it).

What food tour would be complete without chocolate covered bacon?? Apparently not this one! Chocolate covered anything is probably edible. The bacon was just "okay" to me, but the chocolate part was delicious.

The final delight of my Cloud 9 Living experience was the brownie cheesecake bite and the red velvet cupcake. The brownie cheesecake bite is probably the most delicious thing I've eaten in 2012. That alone was worth three hours of walking!

Life is about making memories. You probably won't tell stories to your grandkids about the fancy purse you owned in 2005 or the boots you got for your birthday in 2009, but you will tell them the tales of the wonderful things you've done. Yes, those are grown men in pajamas walking across the street in downtown Austin. I sure hope that part happens just once in my lifetime!

Thanks to Cloud 9 Living for a wonderful birthday gift! Maybe next year, I'll go on a hot air balloon ride or go scuba diving. Go check out all the wonderful things you can experience for yourself and while you're on their website, buy a gift of delightful fun for someone you love!