Fun Friday: Trip to San Antonio

     As some of you may know, we went to San Antonio for a couple days last week. I think I mentioned it once or twice on my facebook page. ;-) Our 8 year anniversary was last week, so we decided to take a little "mini-trip." 
     We got there a little a later than expected. Thanks to my poor navigational skills, we ended up in Austin and decided to check out the capital since we were there. But that's another story. So, it was around 4 when we got to our hotel, when we originally expected to be there by lunchtime. 
     We ended up having to cram everything we wanted to see into one day (Friday), since the main non-downtown things to see (the missions) closed at 5 and we didn't want to pay for parking to go downtown, since we knew we would doing that the next day. By the way, if you are planning a trip to San Antonio, just know that you will be paying $15-20 for a day of parking downtown, which is pretty much where everything is.
     So the first place we went Friday morning was the San Antonio missions. There are 4 (excluding the Alamo, which is downtown) missions still around. We only made it to two, and realized it was close to lunch. If we had gotten to town by lunch on Thursday, we could have seen all four missions Thursday afternoon and spent more time downtown on Friday. 
     The first mission we visited was Mission Concepcion.

     Next we visited Mission San Jose. This one was really neat, and had the really neat arches.

      We would have liked to have visited the other two missions, but we just didn't have the time. So off we went to downtown. We parked closer to the Riverwalk and walked to the Marketplace, an area with all kinds of Mexican themed shops and restaurants. Since it was lunchtime, we went straight to the Mi Tierra restaurants and bakery. The bakery was packed with customers, but I finally got one shot of the pastry case. :-)

      Then we ate lunch, which was a very good Mexican meal. After lunch we went to one of the shopping areas, sort of like an indoor flea market. I think there were others in the marketplace, but we didn't get to look at it all because of the time constraint. We didn't even make it back to the Mi Tierra bakery. :-(

     The Marketplace is several blocks from the Alamo, so around 3:00 we decided we'd better start "hightailin" it if we wanted to see the Alamo. We made it around 4, went to look inside and then took a little break in the back garden area behind the Alamo. 

     Finally it was time for the Riverwalk. The Riverwalk was a little different than I was thinking, but oh-so-neat. Until we got there, I was thinking we'd walk a few streets over and find the Riverwalk. But we actually had to go down stairs and it was like we were transported to this whole other place.It was almost like the buildings were part of the landscape.

     We took the riverboat tour and got to see how many hotels and restaurants there were. 

     Of all the fabulous restaurants on the Riverwalk, we ended up at Rainforest Cafe. And we learned that is not the best place to take young children. The animals "come to life" every 10 or 15 minutes and it results in a scream-fest each time. We got sat next to the gorillas and neither of the kids liked it. It is a really neat atmosphere, though, and the kids did like the big fish tanks. 
     All in all it was a good trip. I just wish we'd been able to get to the marketplace in the morning. But still, it was a fun day in San Antonio!