Barton Springs Pool and a Quintessential Austin Day

A single place can make a town. Luckily, Austin's got several of them. Don't ask me why it took us so long to make it to Barton Springs Pool, where we went yesterday with friends visiting from California. Admittedly, that is some damn cold water, but my goodness, that place has an aura. I'm told a group of Tibetan monks visited a number of years back and deemed the pool a spiritual site; they perform a ceremony there now every time they visit the city. That tale may be urban lore, but it is completely believable. I think we put off going there because we said, "Fine, a pool.  Pools, pools, pools, we get it: Austin is hot, people swim, enough already." We obviously had no idea.

Nestled in a very green and natural setting, the pool is essentially a creek dammed up before it joins the river (but Austinites call it a lake) that winds its way through downtown. Long and narrow, the pool has a wading area and stone beach at one end and a diving board and deep water at the other. The slopes on either side of the pool are rather steep. One side is part grassy hillside and part rocky path around the pool; the other side is all grass. A sign says the surface is natural, though the pool is man-made and the bottom of the pool, which is slick with algae in places, seems poured.

The water is permanently 68 degrees, fed by a natural spring. That probably feels great on a 105-degree day in the middle of summer, but was a little chilly for a 75-degree day in April. I stood in the wading end a full half hour, shivering and creeping forward inch by inch, enjoying the view of a couple skyscrapers downtown that appear in a gap of trees. Finally, I submerged myself - my heart nearly stopped! - and swam to keep warm. One of those delights that come all too infrequently in life.

As we sat on the edge and watched the kids play and swim and explore, I told my husband, "This place alone just raised my quality-of-life assessment of Austin a good three percentage points, maybe more."

Afterward, we made our way down the parking lot of South Lamar just in time to catch a kid's movie and a late lunch at the Alamo Drafthouse, a great place to see a flick and eat in the dark. (Being newbies, we keep making the mistake of ordering nachos, an unwise move when you cannot see what you are reaching into.) On the way back, we grabbed ice cream at Amy's and threw a ball around in Shipe Park, our neighborhood park. Left the kids with our nanny and took off for drinks on the balcony at Stephen P. Austin Intercontinental, which afforded a lovely view of the capitol dome in the sunset. Tapas, small plates and wine at Fino topped off one very spectacular day in Austin.