Texas Capitol & Congress Avenue

No walk says "Austin" like this one. It starts at the pink-granite State Capitol — a building deliberately raised taller than the U.S. Capitol in Washington — and follows Congress Avenue, "the Main Street of Texas," straight down the hill to the Colorado River. Along the way you pass the offices where the Republic's land was parceled out, the mansion where governors have lived since 1856, the hotel where legislators still cut deals, and a suffrage marker that remembers the women who won the vote here. It ends at the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge, where roughly a million and a half Mexican free-tailed bats stream out at dusk from spring through fall — a built-in reason to come back after dark. It is a little over a mile of downhill walking through the ceremonial heart of the state.