Austin Trip, Day 7
Apr. 5th, 2009 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
llcoolvadMonday dawned. My last full day in Texas, and it's another perfect sunny day. Already I'm vaguely cranky, not wanting to leave. But it's finally San Antonio day, and my trip to the Alamo, so we head off. I'm sulky a bit. We eat lunch at El Pollo Loco (cheap and amusing) and get to the Alamo around 1. Suddenly I'm in a great mood! I was expecting something less impressive, I guess, but the grounds are lush and beautiful, with giant gnarled trees for shade, and lots of exotic shrubbery like cactus, palm trees, and interesting ferns. A sign on the door requests that men remove hats out of respect. Something you definitely wouldn't see in the north. There's two buildings left out of the original compound, the Long Barrack and the Church, and they were suitably impressive. They don't allow photography inside, which annoyed me a tiny bit; if you're not using flash, what's the harm? Usually that means to me that they want to control access to all imagery, which means they want to charge you a lot. But despite that, I still had a great time looking around.
My knee was mostly holding up, so we decided to stroll over to the Riverwalk. It was pretty hot out, so when we got there we decided to take a boat tour rather than walk. There were a few minutes to kill before it started so we got some Orange Julius (sadly gone from everywhere around me in MA). Our guide was very amusing (which I gather is not the norm) and the tour was very relaxing. I'm rather smitten with San Antonio, but of course I realize that I've only seen the super-nice touristy part. I'm sure my mood is also helped by the fact that it's March and gorgeous weather. Would I love it in August? Maybe not!
Walking back to the car we got some Sno-Cones, and man, are Sno-Cones the nectar of the gods, or what? Ok, maybe I had sunstroke by then. If I go back to Texas I have GOT to wear a hat.
A little traffic on the way back, so my host took us through side streets and back alleys and up hill and down dale in a mostly-futile attempt to avoid rush hour. But I got to see yet more of Austin. I clocked a lot of miles on this trip. It's possible I've seen most of Austin (at least out the window of the car), and Austin is damned big!
I didn't much want to deal with crowds by this point, and I had finally reached my Tex-Mex fill, so we headed off to a chinese food buffet for dinner. Pretty good! I ate some yummy seafood cakes without realizing they were seafood, and I really liked them. Hmmm. Maybe time to revisit fish in general. Anyway, afterward had a low-key night watching movies in the hotel room and packing up. Don't wanna go home!
More pictures here.
My knee was mostly holding up, so we decided to stroll over to the Riverwalk. It was pretty hot out, so when we got there we decided to take a boat tour rather than walk. There were a few minutes to kill before it started so we got some Orange Julius (sadly gone from everywhere around me in MA). Our guide was very amusing (which I gather is not the norm) and the tour was very relaxing. I'm rather smitten with San Antonio, but of course I realize that I've only seen the super-nice touristy part. I'm sure my mood is also helped by the fact that it's March and gorgeous weather. Would I love it in August? Maybe not!
Walking back to the car we got some Sno-Cones, and man, are Sno-Cones the nectar of the gods, or what? Ok, maybe I had sunstroke by then. If I go back to Texas I have GOT to wear a hat.
A little traffic on the way back, so my host took us through side streets and back alleys and up hill and down dale in a mostly-futile attempt to avoid rush hour. But I got to see yet more of Austin. I clocked a lot of miles on this trip. It's possible I've seen most of Austin (at least out the window of the car), and Austin is damned big!
I didn't much want to deal with crowds by this point, and I had finally reached my Tex-Mex fill, so we headed off to a chinese food buffet for dinner. Pretty good! I ate some yummy seafood cakes without realizing they were seafood, and I really liked them. Hmmm. Maybe time to revisit fish in general. Anyway, afterward had a low-key night watching movies in the hotel room and packing up. Don't wanna go home!
More pictures here.
