Jen’s Journal – December 27, 2019

Day 181: Guadalupe River State Park, TX

Cloudy and warm.

San Antonio

Most people suggest visiting San Antonio when going to Texas. Now I see why. I really liked San Antonio.

The Alamo is a decent historical place. It has a great time line display of the events that happened there. We read the history there about the battle for freedom from centralist Santa Anna. It just didn’t move me like Gettysburg or the Arizona Memorial. Maybe it would if I was a Texan. Maybe if it had more human stories, or graves, or people’s stuff. Maybe if there weren’t so many people there.

The River Walk was absolutely beautiful. The trees, the plants, the restaurants. I’ve been to Venice, and I found the restaurants along the River Walk more inviting.

If only everyone else didn’t decide to go to these places today, too.

After lunch, we toured the city on a double decker bus. The driver kept me laughing the whole time. He used a combination of his recorded stories and his live comments. We saw King William Park, the district of upper class homes, and where Pearl beer used to be made. We learned where to get inexpensive barbecue and cinnamon rolls and where the restaurants are away from the River Walk. It was nice to ride around and see the sights and let someone else negotiate the traffic.

Too bad I won’t get Tom to drive back to any of those places. Unless maybe the kids want to go there from Austin next week.

When you get a little gem like San Antonio, word catches on, and the place becomes too big for small town folks like Tom and me.

Some friends from Australia that we met in Fredericksburg told us about Pollos Asados los Nortenos. The locals know about it. It’s a chicken barbecue. We ordered ours to go and avoided the wait for a table. The chicken was absolutely tender moist and delicious!