Holy Wholefoods

I saw that my book (which is Fodor's, not Frommer's as I had previously said) had suggested checking out Wholefoods in Austin. And naturally I scoffed at it thinking why would I check out a Wholefoods when we have a few in NYC? No thanks. I didn't even read the description. Fortunately my wiser friend Jaime did, being the devoted Nutrition Specialist she is, and it turns out this isn't any ol' Wholefoods, this my friends, is the mothership, the mecca, THE Wholefoods. I never would have thought such a wonderful, and natural/organic, store would originate from Texas. Texas?! But once again, as I kept finding out over and over, this is Austin, not Texas. And man was this Wholefoods an experience. I think we were all excited first at parking (and not even one lot, but a parking garage!). Then 2 escalators up the golden gates opened and behold...Wholefoods, all 80,000 square feet of it. From the get go the veggies were brighter, the oranges more orange, the seafood so fresh; it was tantalizing. I think we ended up doing 3 laps of the store and I'm still not sure that we saw everything. They had an entire section of organic clothes! I've never even seen a shirt in our stores in NYC. I stopped by the tea section, yes an entire beautiful section devoted to tea, and talked to a very friendly employee. (by the way, all the employees there were awesome!) We told her we were from NYC to explain the shock and awe on our faces. She laughed and politely said our stores were "fine." Haha Our stores are nothing like this one. We walked some more and almost made a lunch out of samples: mint quinoa, edamame succatash, fresh gouda. Realizing we couldn't bring the whole store home with us and that we had to settle on something for lunch, we grabbed the fresh sushi and headed to the outdoor lunch area to dine in the sun. I don't know how I'm going to return to our Wholefoods now. And ours, at least the one on Houston, is great! But after seeing this, it's a whole other ballgame.