San Antonio – The Traveling Maker

Day 12 and 13 – 10/18/2022 and 10/19/2022

Next stop is the town of San Antonio, Texas. This is the home of the famous Alamo and the Riverwalk.

While in San Antonio we stayed in the Hyatt Place San Antonio/Riverwalk. It was a beautiful hotel and we had a room looking down to the Riverwalk.

Day 1:

The day we arrived in San Antonio we decided to go find a place to eat dinner on the Riverwalk. So we walked up into town and found a really good Mexican restaurant to eat at. It was called Iron Cactus and was fantastic. The food was excellent and we had a seat looking out to the Riverwalk. We highly recommend trying this restaurant out if you ever go.

There was a bit of a wait so we were waiting just out front watching the boats and other activity on the Riverwalk. While waiting a beggar came up asking for money. Debby told him no. He did not like that answer and started hounding her and telling her she is not better than him. At that point I had enough of him disrespecting my wife so I told him he better back down now and stop talking to my wife like that. At that point he yelled at me and started telling me how even though he just got out of prison he is just as good as me. I thought it was going to turn ugly and I was going to have to stand up and put this guy in his place but I just stopped talking and after a bit he walked away. This was really the only incident we experienced with beggars over our entire vacation.

Right up the stairs from the restaurant they had carriage rides where they would take people around town. They were all lit up. It was beautiful.

While walking back to our hotel we saw some other very interesting buildings and a beautiful view of the Riverwalk.

Day 2:

Today we planned a full day of seeing the Alamo and then riding the boats on the Riverwalk.

We started out at the Alamo. We had a tour scheduled so looked around a bit until the tour began. Then we did the full tour and then were allowed to walk around the Alamo more after the tour and take pictures and read the various signs. The story of the Alamo and the 13 day stand against a huge Mexican army is quite fascinating. It’s worth looking it up and reading through it if you are so inclined.

Note: Curt took a LOT of pictures, basically of every sign and exhibit. He wanted to be able to read through them at his leisure and we didn’t have a month to stand around the Alamo while he read all the signs. You can just skip to the end if you do not want to see all that but feel free to read them if you wish.

This is a statue of Davy Crockett. Most people have heard of him but I don’t know if most people know he died here at the Alamo. He had written a book that is quite fascinating. Curt bought it and is reading it.

After the Alamo we stopped and grabbed some ice cream from Häagen-Dazs. Then we went back to the room and took a little nap. We saw some really interesting water features on the way back.

After almost 2 weeks of fast rood and various exotic and restaurant foods, Debby just wanted plain old American food. So we went to dinner at Cracker Barrel. While heading to dinner we had to drive on a street named Caesar E. Chavez. We got a kick out of the way the GPS pronounced it, “Say-zar-e Shaw-vez”.

After dinner we came back to the hotel and walked downtown to where all the action on the Riverwalk was to ride the boats. On our way we saw this bunch of birds that made us feel as though we were in the movie “The Birds”.

Each boat had different color lights. I was really hoping for a blue one but it wasn’t in the cards. We got a yellow boat. It was so fun and fascinating. The guide driving the boat gave us a lot of interesting facts about the Riverwalk. Here are a few of them.

Over 100 years ago there was a large flood that caused the water to go up to more than 9′ over the bridges
Water in most of the river is only 3′-5′ deep but there is one small section where it is 15′ which is the deepest part of the river
It is illegal to swim in the river and also quite dangerous as the ecoli bacteria level is very high.
There are hundreds of cell phones at the bottom of the river.
It is primarily a natural river with just some manmade structures around it.

At this point the boat operator/guide told us these 5 bells represent 5 Taco Bells in San Antonio – then she laughed and said no, they actually represent the original 5 missions.