There's no basement at the Alamo!

Day: 442
High Temp: 84F

I mentioned in the garden blog that my parents came down to Austin just after our wedding to visit Tom and I, and bring us the load of wedding presents we had received in St Louis. We had a great time showing them some of our new favorite food spots (Hoover's and Juan in a Million were big hits), and they loved getting a chance to see Homer now that he is all grown up.

My parents were planning to stay until Tuesday morning, and as the weekend drew to a close, I started getting pressure from them to take a vacation day on Monday. The big plan was to drive down to San Antonio for the day. Bowing to the pressure, and at the mercy of my extremely flexible boss at UT, I was able to make Monday happen.

San Antonio really surprised me.  I had always heard how amazing the River Walk was, and how disappointing the Alamo was. Truth is, both were very different from what I expected.

I know this is a silly thing to say, but for some reason, I expected the River Walk to be like the Arno in Florence. I expected a large, dominant river, lined on each side by wide side walks lined with old buildings houseing cafes, shops and the like. Lots of space and airy, all anchored by a large, wild river. The truth is, the River Walk is more reminiscent of Venice (are you rolling your eyes yet?)  It is small, the river is fairly shallow and it is extremely engineered with perfect concrete walls along each bank.  Seriously, it's not more than 12 feet across, and the sidewalks are very narrow. The overall affect was more man-made, more like Disneyland, than I had expected. Don't get me wrong, it is a very charming place, and walking below street level next to the water in the shade of the big cypress and oak trees is certainly a nice break from the heat, but it just wasn't what I expected. That said, I am excited to take Tom back to San Antonio around Christmas time, when the abundant trees, bridges and walkways are reportedly covered in lights. Sounds like the perfect setting for an evening river cruise with my sweetie and a thermos of spiked hot cocoa!

While in San Antone we also saw the Alamo, which was kind of awesome. I had been told that it wasn't as cool, or as big as you might expect, and so with my expectations sufficiently lowered, I thought it was great. It doesn't really look like it did in Pee Wee's big Adventure, at least not on the inside, but that did not stop me from proclaiming, many times, "There's no basement at the Alamo!" Thankfully, this was very amusing to my parents. But seriously, it's a big old building, with gorgeous gardens behind the barrack walls. There are also some cool artifacts, like Davey Crockett's rifle.

I also want to note that I actually heard someone call this fair city "San Antone"in all seriousness while we were there. We took a trolley tour to see a few of the old missions and some of the neighborhoods around the city, and this boisterous and entertaining pair of old ladies was on the bus with us. When one of them rudely answered her cellphone during the narrated tour, she proceeded to shout to her caller, "No, we are in San Antone!" Thankfully, our tour guide shamed her by saying he had learned it was rude to talk while others were talking. She got the point and hung up pretty quickly.

PS- I do have some pictures from this trip, but they are stuck on the throw away cameras we were trying to use up post-wedding... May come back and update the post if any turned out once I get them developed.