Rebecca Engel
Every list of things to do in Austin Texas starts in the same place. Sixth Street, six blocks of bars, a stretch that plenty of people who live here haven’t walked down in years. It isn’t that it’s bad. It’s that it’s one street in a city with a spring fed swimming pool in the middle of it.
So this list goes everywhere else. Twenty one things to do in Austin Texas that sit somewhere other than that strip, and between them they cover most of what makes people move here and refuse to leave. Cold water, hot barbecue, live music on a Tuesday, and a hill to watch the sun go down from.
1. Swim At Barton Springs Pool
Barton Springs is a three acre pool in the middle of Zilker Park, fed by an underground spring that keeps it around 68 to 70 degrees no matter what the sky is doing. In August that’s a shock in the best way. In January it’s a shock in the other way, and people still get in.
It doesn’t look like a municipal pool. There’s a grassy hill along one side, a dam at one end, and the bottom is limestone rather than tile.
Go early on a summer weekend or don’t go at all, because the hill fills up by mid morning. Weekday mornings are the good ones.
If the main pool is closed for cleaning, the free section below the dam still runs and nobody minds you being there.
2. Hike The Greenbelt Down To Twin Falls
The Barton Creek Greenbelt runs about seven miles through the middle of the city, and most people never see more than the first half mile of it. Limestone cliffs, twisted oaks, and a creek that pools up into swimming holes.
Twin Falls and Sculpture Falls are the two everyone aims for. Both are a walk rather than a hike, and both are full of people on a nice Saturday.
The important thing nobody tells you is that the creek isn’t always there. After a dry summer or a drought year the swimming holes are bare rock, and that’s normal rather than bad luck. Spring is the safest bet for water.
Even dry it’s a good walk. The cliffs are the real feature and climbers are usually on them.
3. Climb The Steps Up Mount Bonnell At Sunset
Mount Bonnell is barely a mountain. It’s a limestone bluff above Lake Austin with about a hundred stone steps up to a covered pavilion at the top, and the whole climb takes five minutes.
What you get for it is the best free view in the city. The river bends below you, the hills roll off to the west, and downtown sits away to your left.
Sunset is the obvious time and everyone knows it, so the steps get busy. Come an hour before and claim a spot on the rocks off to the side.
There’s no water and not much shade at the top, which matters more here than it sounds like it should.
4. Wait In Line At Franklin Barbecue
Franklin sells brisket until it runs out and then closes, which is usually a few hours after opening. They’re shut on Mondays. That’s the whole system, and it has produced one of the most famous queues in American food.
The line is genuinely part of it. People bring camp chairs and beer, and by the time you get to the counter you’ve talked to everyone around you.
Two to four hours is normal on a weekend, one to two on a weekday. Get there well before opening if you want a choice of cuts rather than whatever is left.
If the wait sounds unbearable, Austin has half a dozen places doing brisket at a level that would be the best in town anywhere else. Nobody will judge you for going to one of them instead.
5. Paddle Lady Bird Lake From Zilker
Lady Bird Lake is a dammed stretch of the Colorado River running right through downtown, and there are no motorboats on it. Just kayaks, canoes and paddleboards, which makes it quiet in a way a city lake usually isn’t.
Rentals sit at the Zilker end and at a few docks along the shore. An hour is enough to get out under the bridges and back.
Paddling east puts the skyline in front of you the whole way, which is the view every photo of Austin is taken from.
The hike and bike trail loops the water for about ten miles if you’d rather stay dry. It’s flat, shaded in stretches, and busy at every hour.
6. Two Step At The Broken Spoke
The Broken Spoke is a low wooden dance hall on South Lamar with a dirt coloured floor, a stage at the back and condos built up against it on both sides. It has been there since 1964 and refused every offer since.
There’s a two step lesson most evenings before the band starts, aimed squarely at people who have never done it. An hour later you can get around the floor without hurting anybody.
The crowd is genuinely mixed. Couples who have been coming for forty years, students, and tourists who found it on a list like this one.
Cash goes further here and the tables fill early. Eat first, because the kitchen is not the reason to come.
7. Catch A Late Set At The Continental Club
The Continental Club sits on South Congress and has been running since 1955. It’s small, dark, and the stage is about a foot high, so the band is basically in the room with you.
Music runs most nights and the early sets are often free or close to it. The late sets are where the better known names turn up.
This is the answer to people who say Austin’s live music scene isn’t what it was. It’s not on Sixth Street any more, that’s all.
Check who’s playing before you commit to a night, since the booking swings from rockabilly to blues to country depending on the evening.
8. Eat Breakfast Tacos At Veracruz All Natural
Breakfast tacos are the food Austin argues about most, and Veracruz is the name that comes up first. It started as a trailer and grew into several locations without getting worse, which is rare.
The migas taco is the one to order. Eggs, tortilla chips, cheese and salsa in a flour tortilla, and it makes more sense in your hand than it does written down.
Expect a line at the trailer locations on a weekend morning. It moves faster than the barbecue one.
Get salsa on the side and don’t be polite about how much you use.
9. Take The Free Tour Of The Texas State Capitol
The Texas Capitol is pink granite, sits at the top of Congress Avenue, and is taller than the national Capitol in Washington, which is the kind of fact Texas builds a building around.
Free guided tours run through the day and you can also just walk in and wander. The rotunda floor and the view straight up into the dome are the parts people stand still for.
The grounds are worth a lap too. Old oaks, monuments, and a lawn that catches the afternoon light.
It’s air conditioned, it’s free, and it’s ten minutes from most of downtown, which makes it the obvious move on a punishing summer afternoon.
10. Stand Inside Ellsworth Kelly’s Austin At The Blanton
The Blanton is the University of Texas art museum, and the thing to see there is a small stone building on the lawn outside it. Ellsworth Kelly designed it, it’s called Austin, and it was the last work he made.
Inside there’s coloured glass, a black and white marble floor, and almost nothing else. Light comes through the windows and moves across the walls, and the whole point is to stand there while it does.
The main collection is strong on Latin American art and worth the rest of the visit.
Go on a bright day. Overcast weather takes most of the effect away, since the glass is doing all the work.
11. Book A Visit To The Cathedral Of Junk
In a back garden in south Austin there’s a structure built out of roughly sixty tons of salvage. Bicycle wheels, bottles, hubcaps, televisions, all of it stacked and welded into towers and tunnels you can climb through.
A man named Vince Hannemann started it in 1988 and has been adding to it ever since. It’s his actual back garden, which is the part that takes a second to land.
You have to call ahead and book, because someone lives there. Entry is free and a donation is the right move.
This is the single most Austin thing on this list, and it’s about fifteen minutes from downtown in a neighbourhood no visitor would otherwise see.
12. Find The I Love You So Much Wall On South Congress
It’s a green wall with four words scrawled on it in red, on the side of a coffee shop on South Congress, and there is almost always somebody having their photo taken in front of it.
That sounds like a reason to skip it. Go anyway. It takes two minutes and it’s on the way to everything else on that street.
There are better murals in Austin and several of them are within a few blocks, including a greetings from Austin postcard wall a short walk south.
Early morning is the only time the wall is empty, if an unobstructed photo is the goal.
13. Swim Laps At Deep Eddy Pool
Deep Eddy is the oldest swimming pool in Texas, built in 1915 around a natural swimming hole in the river. It’s spring fed like Barton Springs and sits at a similar temperature all year.
It’s smaller, calmer, and far less of a scene. Lap lanes at one end, a shallow end for children, and a lawn with pecan trees.
The city runs it year round, and lap swimming is free through the late autumn and winter, which makes it one of the better cheap mornings in the city.
Hours shift with the season and it closes for cleaning, so check before you drive over.
14. Spend A Morning At McKinney Falls State Park
There’s a state park inside the Austin city limits, about twenty minutes from downtown, and most visitors have no idea it’s there. McKinney Falls has two waterfalls, a creek running over slabs of limestone, and enough trail to fill a morning.
The upper falls are the ones to walk to. Flat rock, shallow water running across it, and cypress trees along the bank.
Like the greenbelt, the water depends on rain. After a dry spell you’ll find rock rather than falls, and the trails are still good.
There’s a day use fee and the park caps entry when it fills, so book online for a weekend.
15. Work Your Way Down The Bungalows On Rainey Street
Rainey Street is a row of old houses that were turned into bars, so instead of a strip of storefronts you get porches, back gardens, string lights and food trucks parked in the yards.
It’s the closest thing Austin has to a replacement for the Sixth Street night out, and it’s a much better version of one. Towers have gone up around it, but the bungalows are still the point.
Go early in the evening if you want to hear anyone talk. It gets loud and packed later, particularly on a weekend.
The food trucks behind several of the bars are proper dinner rather than an afterthought.
16. Try On Boots At Allens On South Congress
Allens Boots has been on South Congress since 1977 and the inside is wall to wall boots, floor to ceiling, in every colour and hide you can think of.
Nobody is going to push you to buy. Trying on a pair of stitched leather boots you have no intention of purchasing is a normal afternoon in there.
If you do buy, they’ll tell you honestly about fit, and a real pair will outlast most of what’s in your wardrobe.
The rest of South Congress runs on either side of it, so this works as the anchor for an afternoon of wandering rather than a single stop.
17. See The New Walls At HOPE Outdoor Gallery
For years Austin had a graffiti park on a hillside of abandoned condo foundations, and it closed in 2019. Plenty of guides still send people to that empty lot.
It reopened at the end of 2025 in a new place out near the airport, with mural walls, park space and an indoor gallery. It’s a proper site now rather than a ruin people climbed on.
The walls get painted over constantly, which is the whole idea, so what you see won’t be what anyone photographed last month.
Check the opening hours before going, since it’s a fair way out and not somewhere to arrive on spec.
18. Read On The Roof Of The Central Library
Austin’s central library opened in 2017 and people who don’t read books go there. It’s built around a six storey atrium with staircases crossing it, and there’s a rooftop garden on top with a view over the lake.
You don’t need a card to walk in. There’s a cafe, a lot of natural light, and armchairs by windows that nobody chases you out of.
For a hot afternoon or a rainy one it’s the best free indoor hour in the city, and it sits right by the water.
The bookshop by the entrance sells donated books for very little and is worth ten minutes on the way out.
19. Watch The Bats Leave The Congress Avenue Bridge
A colony of bats roosts under the Congress Avenue Bridge, and around sunset they pour out from underneath it in a long ribbon and head off to feed. Crowds gather on the bridge and on the lawn below to watch it happen.
Timing matters twice. The bats are only here from roughly late March to November, since they head to Mexico for the winter, so a January visit gets you an empty bridge.
Within the season, August is the strongest month and there’s a quiet stretch from late May into July while the young are learning to fly. Emergence is usually within half an hour of sundown.
The lawn on the south east side is a better view than the bridge itself and far less crowded. Downwind is a decision you only make once.
20. Play A Round At Peter Pan Mini Golf
Peter Pan Mini Golf has been on the same corner since 1948, and the giant concrete statues out front have been there long enough to be a landmark rather than a decoration.
It’s two courses, both crooked and worn in the way a course gets after seventy years. You can bring your own drinks, which most people do.
It fills with a mix of families in the afternoon and groups in their twenties after dark, and both work.
Cash only historically, so bring some rather than finding out at the window.
21. Drive Out To The Salt Lick In Driftwood
The Salt Lick is about half an hour southwest of Austin in Driftwood, and the drive out through the hill country is half the reason to do it.
The pit sits right by the door, open, with meat over live coals as you walk in. Long shared tables, family style plates, and a scale that feels more like a barn than a restaurant.
It’s in a dry precinct, so bring your own beer or wine. That catches people out constantly and there’s nowhere nearby to fix it.
Weekend waits are long and they don’t take reservations for the family style seating. Aim for a late lunch on a weekday.
So What About Sixth Street?
It’s a real place and worth being honest about. Dirty Sixth is the stretch east of Congress that closes to traffic at night, and it’s bars, crowds and noise aimed squarely at people who want exactly that.
If you’re in your twenties and out with a group on a Saturday, it does the job and does it cheaply. There’s nothing wrong with an hour there.
What it isn’t is the centre of the city’s music scene any more, which is the impression most travel writing still leaves. That moved out to South Congress, South Lamar, Red River and the east side years ago.
West Sixth, on the other side of Congress, is a different and calmer proposition. And Antone’s, the blues club that made half of Austin’s reputation, sits on East Fifth, one street over.
More Things To Do In Austin Texas
A few more that didn’t need a numbered slot but are worth your time if the trip runs long.
The LBJ Presidential Library on the university campus is better than it sounds, and the Bullock Texas State History Museum next door does a good job of a very large subject. The Umlauf Sculpture Garden is a quiet hour near Zilker that almost nobody books.
Mozart’s sits right on Lake Austin with a deck over the water and is the best place in town to spend two hours doing nothing. Amy’s Ice Creams is a local institution and the staff throw the scoops.
And if you have a full day and a car, Hamilton Pool is a collapsed grotto with a waterfall about forty five minutes west. Reservations are required and sell out, so that’s a plan rather than a whim.
What To Know Before You Go
The heat is the thing to plan around. July and August sit at or above a hundred degrees for weeks, and it reshapes this whole list into a morning and evening city. Spring and autumn are the comfortable seasons, and winter is mild enough that the outdoor items still work.
Austin is spread out and the traffic is worse than the size of the place suggests. Group things by neighbourhood rather than crisscrossing, since South Congress, downtown, the east side and Zilker each hold a half day on their own.
Two items here run on their own schedule. The bats are gone from December through March, and the greenbelt and McKinney Falls need recent rain to have water in them.
Book what needs booking. Hamilton Pool and the Cathedral of Junk both need arranging ahead, and the barbecue places sell out rather than close.
Final Thoughts
None of the best things to do in Austin Texas are on the street that every guide leads with, and once you spend a couple of days here that stops being a surprise.
The city runs on water, meat, and music, and all three are better a mile or two away from the strip. A morning in a cold spring, an afternoon on South Congress, and a band you’d never heard of at eleven at night is a very good day.
Pick a neighbourhood, walk it properly, and leave the itinerary loose enough to follow whatever somebody at the next table tells you about.
