May 2024 Monthly Adventure
I have lived in Austin for about nine years and had visited the city a few times prior to moving to here. However, I had never taken a bus tour of Austin before with a tour company. The entire idea behind my Monthly Adventures Series is to be a tourist in my own city. Nothing screams "tourist" more than a city bus tour!
Background
Inspired by how much I appreciated the bus tour I took when I spent a day roaming around Miami, I decided I needed to take a bus tour of Austin. On the Austin Visitor Center website, there are several different tour companies listed that pick up and drop off at the Austin Visitor Center in downtown. Most of these tours have some sort of open air vehicle. The weather forecast on the day I took this tour was sunny and in the mid-90s. I was not about to ride around in the heat and I wanted to find one of the cheapest tours, so I decided to book with AO Tours Austin. They have a 90-minute continuous tour in a fully enclosed passenger van with air conditioning and that's exactly what I needed. Not exactly a bus but I would say it's close enough. With taxes and fees, I paid about $35 for my ticket to ride around Austin.
Getting to the Austin Visitors Center
My original plan for getting to the Austin Visitors Center was to take the rail line with CapMetro. However, I wasn't able to get into the parking lot at the park and ride that's closest to where I live. Driving in downtown is stressful and parking is expensive. I had hoped to take the train into town to reduce my stress and save money, but that didn't go according to plan. Instead, I found myself driving to the heart of Austin and parking in the convention center garage off Brazos Street. Apparently that was the wrong garage because I had to walk a few blocks to the Austin Visitor Center which is at the other convention center parking garage. Oh, well! You live and you learn. Parking was $10 which isn't as expensive as other garages, but more than I wanted to spend because I never planned to drive there.
AO Tours Austin: Austin + Hill Country 90-minute Non-Stop Tour
The AO Tours black passenger van with pink AO Tours logos and tinted windows was parked alongside the Austin Visitor Center facing 5th Street when I arrived. My tour guide gave me a call as I was walking over from the garage to confirm my plans to be there and let me know that the group would be leaving on time. I arrived just as our tour group was about to begin loading into the van and I buckled my seatbelt after finding a seat. What makes this tour unique is that we had a live tour guide driving us around while sharing some personal anecdotes and fun facts in between a playlist of extended clips that provide more detail about what we were viewing as we made the scenic drive around Austin.
Of course, we started the tour with a few highlights of Downtown Austin. Then, we made our way to the west side of town where we enjoyed a beautiful drive through the hills and saw some of the most expensive homes in town. As an Austin local, one thing that never ceases to amaze me is the gorgeous views along the TX-360 Loop! That's one thing I never get to fully take in when driving because I have to keep my eyes on the road. A bus tour (or a passenger van in this case) allowed me to really take a meaningful look at the landscape around me. It also helped that the tour guide would intentionally slow down or take a brief pause for our tour group to enjoy the view.
From the hills, we made a quick passthrough of downtown for a few points of interest before heading over to East Austin. On the east side of town, we rolled through the Historic French Legation area and circled through the Texas State Cemetery. After that, we returned to Downtown Austin for major highlights that anyone visiting the Capital City (hint, hint) should take time to check out before returning to the Austin Visitor Center to conclude the tour.
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Wrap-Up
Overall, I enjoyed my bus tour of Austin! I feel like it was a great opportunity to learn a few new fun facts about the city and see a few streets that I had never driven on before. If you are limited on time or just want to get a short introduction to Austin, this AO Tours enclosed passenger van might be a good fit for you. However, the continuous ride and windows does make it a bit more complicated for taking pictures. If you want to take a longer ride around the city and maybe do something a bit more adventurous, I recommend exploring the other tour options that were listed on the Austin Visitor Center website. You can even do walking tours, bike tours, or other tour options if you want to do something a bit more active. Just keep in mind that it gets extremely hot in Austin between late-May and mid-October.
My biggest takeaway from doing a bus tour in the city I call home is that if I ever move, I would want to do a bus tour in my new location. It's fun to be a tourist in the place where you live and work! You get a different perspective of roads you take all the time because you're now a passenger rather than the driver. You also get to learn some interesting things about the city that you might not have known before. While this isn't the cheapest activity you can do to explore a city, it's one that sure is a lot of fun and can easily be worth the extra money when you find a tour company that has what you're looking for!
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