First, I live in the States most of the year so I don't travel here to vacation (sorry, holiday...). I'm here partly because I found trying to fund SME's in the UK too much like pushing boulders up hills, and you don't want to hear my rants on the distortion of asset price bubbles in the 80's and the 00's.

This thread is, of course, stuffed full of stereotypes, not the least being some notion that the Country is anti-Gay, so here's a weird fact for you - Austin, slap bang in the middle of Texas, has one of the largest percentages of openly Gay people in the world, ranked not too far behind San Francisco. It's a young, liberal, diverse place to live. And here's another point - the Lords Day Observance nutters haven't restricted Sunday shopping hours like they managed in the UK, though you can't buy booze before midday on Sunday in Texas.

So there are differences - not all good, not all bad.

Having said all that, Austin is a great place to live, but it's not a place for a vacation. Conversely, San Francisco is fine for visitors if you like City-scale theme parks, but I didn't find the sense community and wouldn't choose to live there again - in some respects it, as well as places like Orlando, remind me of Bognor.

The only reason for most visitors to come to Austin for more than a day or two would be one of the events like SWSX, or, starting next year, if you're a motor racing fan, since we're getting Formula 1 from 2012, MotoGP & Australian V8 Supercars from 2013 and almost certainly other series.