We met our friends Paula and Tim in San Antonio on Friday, to celebrate Paula's upcoming birthday (one of those landmark birthdays - the kind that ends in an "O"!). Since we were only staying one night, we decided to splurge and stay somewhere nice, right on the riverwalk -- a place we had never stayed before called Hotel Valencia. We had lunch at a little cafe right next door, and loved how cool and shady it was on their terrace overlooking the river, even though it had reached about 1,000 degrees up on the street level.
After lunch we started strolling down the riverwalk. It was very pleasant at first, but as the afternoon wore on, we passed more and more tourists drinking things like this...
and this...
(what's with the upside down beer bottles?), which made us kinda thirsty, so the guys made us stop here...
at the Esquire -- one of the oldest bars in Texas. Or was it the longest bar in Texas? Don't remember. All I know is, it was deliciously cool inside, and the bartender was willing to fix me a diet coke with two lime slices in it, which made me a happy camper!
By the time we made it all the way down the river...
to La Villita, it had climbed to 2,000 degrees out, and our energy was seriously flaggin', so we decided to take one of these cute little trollies back to our hotel.
That's us, sitting on the trolley, with no driver! Soon as we got on, he got off, and just left us sittin' there, with no explanation. Luckily, he came back about 5 minutes later. We asked him to tell us when we got to the stop closest to our hotel. He gave us kind of a funny look, and said something about it being just around the corner. Ha, I don't think so! Sure enough though, he drove around one corner, and said "Here ya go!" Could the river really have looped around and brought us right back where we started? Maybe so. So we got off, and he drove away. Only when we looked around, we realized we were nowhere near our hotel, and we'd just paid that sucker four and a half bucks to drive us half a block! When we realized the trolley was still at the next light, Tim took off running. Luckily, the driver had realized his mistake, and was waiting for us. "Oops, my bad! I was thinking of another hotel." Yeah, well, he's just lucky one of us didn't have a heart attack trying to chase him down, what with it being 3,000 degrees out!
After a nice shower and a nap, we felt rejuvenated enough to head out for an early dinner at Boudro's: A Texas Bistro on the Riverwalk. We are ever so grateful to the fellow blogger who recommended it to us. We all had lovely meals, and Dear Hubby even went to far as to say his steak was the best he'd ever eaten (and he's had quite a few!).
The piece de resistance, though, came after dinner. We hopped into a cab and headed down Commerce St. to the little Cameo Theatre on the other side of the freeway, where we had tickets to see a show called High Hair and Jalapenos. Except for that one little part where it looked like they might be planning to drag me up on stage and give me a mile-high beehive hair-do (that's what you get when you sit on the first row), I'd say the whole evening was just a hoot 'n a holler!
SAN ANTONIO: DAY ONE
Reviewed by juragan asem
Published :
Rating : 4.5
Published :
Rating : 4.5
