Hey guys, or as they say in Texas, “ya’ll”! Trust me, I know about how they say “ya’ll” because my cousins are from Texas and they like to tease me for saying “you guys”. And of course how I drink unsweetened tea vs sweet tea – unsweetened tea tastes like dirty water they say. Oh and that we don’t have good Mexican food in the Midwest, which in comparison to San Antonio’s Mexican food they are 200% right about that!
This post about our San Antonio trip that we went on way back in the last week of October was supposed to be written forever ago but somehow the food always comes first on this blog, especially with Thanksgiving. Here we are in December with our first Iowa snow – let’s take a break from the cold, snowy weather and talk about how amazing and green and warm San Antonio was at the end of October. Who’s with me?!
This San Antonio trip came about because Paul’s job sent him to this convention to learn more about a program that he supports. I won’t bore you with the details about it mostly because all of it goes way over my head. Paul is a Computer Programmer Analyst which means he writes programs for his company in fancy coding languages that I know very little about – he’s smart! Anyways, it worked out that I was able to tag along on Paul’s work trip. No complaints here!!! It also worked out that we were able to take a few extra days to do some sight seeing together. And to make the 1 hour drive to Austin to visit my cousins for a day. I wish I would have gotten pictures of us while we were visiting – too caught up in the moment.
(Austin, Texas)
As you can see I didn’t forget to take pictures of everything else about San Antonio! For majority of the days we were there Paul was busy at his conference thing so I was solo and part of how I entertained myself was to take a lot of photos! 280 some to be exact! It’s pretty much a miracle that I whittled them down to only 30 photos for this post!
I have to admit that when we planned this trip to San Antonio, I was excited for the challenge of travelling on my own. As the trip got closer I got pretty nervous about the situation. I love to travel but I have always been with someone. Yes, I have flown by myself to destinations, but I have always been meeting people there and have never explored a city all by my self. I know, I know this isn’t what a 30-year-old should be worried about, right?! Especially coming from someone who studied abroad in Ireland and traveled around Europe. But what if I get lost? What If I lose my purse? What will people think of me while I am eating at restaurants alone?! Will I get bored?! This was a first for me. I made the decision before we even left that I wasn’t going to let myself chicken out and end up sitting in a hotel room the entire time – because that would just be sad. This was going to be my little adventure!
You know what I discovered? That I really enjoyed exploring San Antonio by myself. I didn’t have to worry about what anyone else wanted to do, where they wanted to eat, or if I was spending too much time in one place. I was really able to slow down and take my time. Don’t get me wrong I was really happy to join Paul for dinner when he was done with his conference each day – I had a lot to say all of a sudden. But traveling by myself felt empowering and more grown up, like I’m actually 30-years-old! By the end of the trip I didn’t care anymore what people thought when they saw me eating by myself at a restaurant. Guess what, I didn’t lose my purse or get lost and I didn’t get bored!
What did we do before we had smart phones? I seriously don’t even remember! Without my smart phone I would have felt very lost and probably would have actually gotten lost. I used it to download the Uber app to get around. I used it to look up fun things to do, places to eat, to take all of my pictures. I even used it to google how to get a huge, embarrassing chocolate stain out of my shirt. Club soda anyone?! Just in case you are wondering, it did the trick!
Everyone told me about the river walk in San Antonio and I was like “yeah okay, I’ll go walk by the river for like an hour, what else is there to do”?! Ha! Boy, was I mistaken, what I thought would be a little sidewalk down by the river was almost like a city of it’s own! To get to the river walk you have to take stairs one story level down from the streets of San Antonio. There are pedestrian sidewalks on either side of the river with beautiful walkway bridges and restaurants and shops. There are fancy hotels, a huge shopping mall, boats that give you tours. There’s even a theater that hosts performances. You can walk to La Villita, a historic town that has a few restaurants and one-of-a-kind artisan shops. The river walk offered plenty of benches to sit on by man made waterfalls. There were ducks to watch and to feed while you ate your chips and salsa outside. There were plenty of margaritas to be consumed – oh boy were there margaritas! The San Antonio river walk is vibrant and lively, it could easily keep your attention for the entire weekend. If you haven’t been I highly recommend that you go!
We happened to go to San Antonio during the end of October, while the city was decorating for their Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) festival. It was fun to see all the decorations, but sadly we left just before the festival. It made me appreciate all of the hand painted, authentic Mexican ceramics I saw when I went to the Historic Market Square.
We found out how to survive on one carry on suitcase between the two of us. Not by choice, but because we were air heads and got to the airport just as they were boarding our flight so we had to throw Paul’s work clothes into my tiny carry on and take out all of my makeup and cosmetics and running shoes to make room – then Paul had to run his full size suitcase back to our car all in 2.5 seconds! [Insert laughing with tears emoji face here] Good thing it was a small airport! We did laugh about it later, after we made a target run for cosmetic essentials and a few clothes.
My time in San Antonio was an adventure for me and a good work opportunity for Paul. We soaked up the sunny 85 degree weather that still felt like summer while everyone was dealing with fall weather in the Midwest. We ate plenty of good Mexican food (best chicken mole ever!) and drank plenty of margaritas (for me) and Mexican beer (for Paul). San Antonio was good to us both.
Here come the pictures! Be ready!
(The Alamo)
Japanese Gardens:
The River Walk:
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