San Antonio in Early December

When trying to plan a getaway for seven people over four days many things can happen  Because of business he has to attend to in Texas, Mike is driving down instead of flying.  Our Friday segway tour is now scheduled for Sunday  since its going to be bitter cold with snow on Friday.  Then mid day Today our Garmin quit working.  That changes lots of things.

We make it to Tulsa on time with minor aggrevations.  Quick flight to Dallas and then presto.... we're in San Antonio in our rental van meeting Mike at the Magnolia Pancake Haus.  Great pancakes, great breakfast  even if it was noon.  From there we find our motel, the Holiday Inn Tropicano. We got this on Hotwire and it was a great place for the money.  Then on to the Tower of the Americas for our trip to the observation deck.  Great view of the city as always and then we enjoyed the 4D Texas film. Next we follow the riverwalk spur from the convention center to the River Center Mall to ride the boat tour.  Our friends enjoyed the ride and the educational part of it.  Then the trouble starts; our trust Garmin refused to work and kept us from finding Chunky's burgers.  I'm afraid Garmy will have to be put down. I was ready to put under the wheels of our car myself.  We go instead to Mi Tierrra.  I must say the food was great but after the second time the singing musicians interrupt our meal to ask for money we start to get annoyed. After the sixth time we vow never to return..  We now rush to the ballgame making it just in time.  Its a good game but the Spurs are beaten by the Celtics.  Back to the hotel for the end of a long day.

We wake up in sunny San Antonio to a temperature of 35 degrees. but luckily the snow missed us.  Kind of wished we had been in town for the earliest snow ever and the first since 1985.  Our first stop is the IMAX to do our mandatory watching of the Alamo movie. It always puts us in a good frame of mind to enter the Alamo itself across the street.  But before we do that we eat lunch at Schilo's Deli.  We had great food and  a great time, eating Reubens, weinersnitzel, sausages, German potato salad, and soups. 

     After lunch we visit the Alamo and the museum and gift shop.  There's always a feeling when you walk in.

     Next its shopping in the mall, or for Mike and I its a lot of sitting.  This goes on longer than I would have liked and the weather's not warm enough to sit outside. 

We go home and rest and then its time to find Augie's Barbed Wire Smokehouse.  Not too much indoor seating and not too many people there.  The food is fine but we're tiring of walking in a place and having to quickly make up our minds.  After supper we're still moving so we go watch a AHL Hockey game in the AT&T center.  Better seats and lots of action.  Its late another day done.

     Another fairly late start, we get to the GM steak house at 9:00  Cheap $3.50 breakfast, nothing special .  After that we go to the Imax to check out the 3-D Christmas Carol movie  It doesn't  start for nearly an hour so Mike and I sit on another Mall bench while the women shop some.  The movie was good but some of the 3-D   scenes made me dizzy.  Next was a tour of the courtyard of the Alamo where they were having demonstrations of cooking and weapons and soldiers lives at the time of the battle.  Then back to the hotel to rest 45 minutes before heading to Lockhart Tx to eat at Black's bbq.  I couldn't decide between it and Smitty's and wish I"d have tried the other, maybe even Kreuz.  I don't get the warm fuzzies for a place that charges $1.50 for sides which include cole slaw and potato salad out of a box.  The sausage was good and the meat wasn't bad , but I'm wanting to be blown away with food and I haven';t been so far on this trip.  From there its hurry back to the AT&T center for our last ball game.The Spurs just don't have the horses and lose to the Nuggets.  Only one more full day.  I really would like to spend  a little time at the mall on the riverwalk listening to Andean Fusion.

     Our final full day.  We leave by vehicle and make it to the Guenther House at 9.  We has to eat  outside the main house in the closed pavillion.  It was a little chilly but the food was great.  My breakfast tacos were good and we had sticky buns, nut rolls and cinnamon rolls as an appetizer. Afterward we walked around the King William district before heading uptown to walk around the Cathedral, the Governor's Palace and the Plaza.  After that it was back to the hotel to wait  til time for the Segway tour.

     This was the highlight of the whole trip.  The segways were fun to ride and the tour was outstanding.  Brett was our guide and I highly recommend him to anyone wanting to do this. We went for miles all over town and learned a lot.  About much fun as anything was taking segways all out on a closed off parking lot.
     After getting our land legs back we had our last meal at Cafe Rio , a lot of great Mexican food at a really fair price. Then we found out what downtown cost us, $18 at the RiverCenter parking garage because we stayed for 6 hours and didn't buy anything to validate our ticket with.  Oh well  It's been a great time.