Austin City Limits, or ACL for short, is a music festival held in Zilker park in Austin, Texas once every year in the beginning of October. After the cancellation of LouFest this year, there were a few Parkway Central students that found themselves immersed in the live music scene at ACL instead.

“I love live music and the lineup at ACL was so amazing this year,” junior Kaitlyn Goldstein said. “I wanted to go because I’ve never been to Austin before and I really wanted to tour the University of Texas for college.”

Goldstein went with a friend from Ladue High School and both of their moms. But another student, senior Ashley Herman, decided to travel to the festival on her own. Although going solo, she met up with friends to go with while in Texas.

Herman said “my friend who lives in Texas told me about it and really wanted me to go because it’s a very popular thing to go to there. It was so fun because I got to spend the whole weekend with one of my best friends who I don’t get to see often.”

Although Goldstein and Herman were only able to see around 20 of the performances, there were over 130 different artists and bands in the lineup such as Khalid, Shawn Mendes, Travis Scott, and Brockhampton as well as some smaller artists too. Aside from the music, the festival also had many food trucks and places to eat along with places to buy merchandise, shop in pop-up shops, and spots to take cute pictures.

After returning home from the experience, Herman said “it was truly one of the best experiences of my life. Austin is such a cool city and the whole atmosphere was very exciting to be a part of. I would 100 percent go again because it was a blast and they had an amazing lineup.”

The two girls agreed the experience was worth missing school for as they each only missed one day and the whole weekend was extremely affordable with ticket prices for the whole festival set at only $275.

“It was an amazing city with amazing acts and it was such an amazing time. 10/10 would recommend going to and definitely would attend again.’ Goldstein said.