Saturday, July 5, 2008

Concert & Fireworks at Auditorium Shores - Austin, TX

It's not on our list because we go every year, but I thought I'd share.

Every year the Austin Symphony Orchestra puts on a free concert and fireworks show for the people of this lovely city. After several years of construction and renovation, it was back at Auditorium Shores (the park along the river, right in front of the Long Center, where the Symphony performs), a way better location on all fronts than Zilker Park (huge park just south of the river and downtown) could ever hope to be. To be fair, Zilker has Barton Springs pool and picnicing areas across the street from where they did fireworks, but those are before-activities, not during-activities, and traffic was beyond awful in and out.

We caught the bus because parking is usually a nightmare with that many people, and we live right on one of the lines that goes right past Auditorium Shores. Once there, we met up with my husband's sister and her family. We ate snacks (there's tons of food vendors, though we usually bring our own) and grooved to the radio station that broadcasting the concert. At concert time, we could see the symphony pretty well and the sound system was set up so everyone, even the people on the other side of the river, could hear.


My son rocked out to Leroy Anderson and his Syncopated Clock, dancing around the blankets, and loved being bounced on my knees for Sousa and the 1812 Overture. My daughter somehow fell asleep during that last one and missed ~95% of the fireworks.


The show was great and as a bonus you could see the reflections ripple down the side of one of the new condo towers. It was a super cool effect.


Here's a video of the show. No, my camera doesn't have sound.

1 comment:

Corinne said...

Lisa - this sounds GREAT!!! Looks more like a small town affair - for such a big city, that's awesome. I'd love to try that sometime :)