A few days in San Antonio

Okay, so I have been to San Antonio many times before, and while it used to be a very special place, well, I've done most of that and usually don't feel the need to spend a lot of money doing it again. I am sure that there are things in the area that I would like to do and haven't done, the main thing that I would like to do there and have never done is go to Fiesta Texas. (I never went to Houston's Astro World, and I regret that.) So while it is nice to go to San Antonio if I have the money and the time, I just don't make a special effort to do that anymore.

But there are a few things that are still very nice if you don't have to spend too much money. Like, if you are going to be in the area anyway, you might as well go to the Riverwalk. Except that they place that we would like to park the car costs ten dollars. But that isn't too bad. And we would like to eat lunch or dinner while we are there, though most of those places can get expensive. But we do like a certain place that is no more expensive than most of the places we would eat at here, so that's alright if we have the money. So that's a not too expensive dinner plus ten dollars to park.

And then there are the little boat tours. Tickets are about nine dollars. We took a tour the first time we were there, but we have skipped it most of the times since then.

So, I have been to the Riverwalk many times, though rarely at night. And I can't remember being there in December. So on Sunday we went there and had dinner and took the boat tour at night, when they had all the Christmas lights. So that was a very pleasant evening, and we spent a little over fifty dollars. The motel room didn't count, as it was a business expense, and he'll get paid back for that.

I guess I skipped over the drive there. It was pleasant enough. We stopped at a bakery in West, and then my husband pointed out another bakery in Waco. The new bakery in Waco is the third (that I know of) Collin Street Bakery. But Collin Street isn't in Waco, it is in Corsicana, which is not even on that same interstate.

If you do not know, Corsicana is the Fruitcake Capital of the World.

Anyway, we did not stop that time. On down the road we went, til we were nearly there, and we stopped at The Snake Farm. I do not believe that I have ever been to the place before, though the husband says that we have. Maybe we have, once, but mainly I remember trying to go there and being there too early or too late or at the wrong time of year, etc.... So we had made good time, and it was a bit after lunch, and it was a Sunday, so they were open. Tickets are about ten dollars each, which is a bit much for such a small zoo, since you could go to a much bigger zoo for the same price or even less. But I was spending the day being a tourist, and I wanted to go anyway. It is a big room with a lot of snakes, and some animals outside behind the building. Mostly average stuff in small cages, but there were a couple of wolves and a couple of hyenas. I tend to go to a lot of zoos, but I don't think that I've been up close to a hyena before. So that was cool.

There was this odd bit with the rats. There were rats outside everywhere, getting into the cages and stealing lunch. But these weren't your average wild rats, they were white with spots, like you would get at a pet store. I am wondering if a couple of them were meant to be someone's lunch, and they escaped, and now there are rats everywhere.

We didn't spend much time there. I found something at the gift shop that I will give my brother for Christmas. Then we got back on the road.

The room was nice enough, but nothing special. The cable sucked. Not even the SyFy channel. And I forgot my pillows. You can't take your bed with you, but you would be more comfortable in the motel room if you remember to bring your own pillows, but I forgot. Lucky for me, this motel decided to go with many smaller pillows instead of a few giant ones. So I did not break my neck on the strange pillows.

One thing with the room was a disappointment, no micro-fridge. I have gotten so used to that being standard that I forgot to ask, so we didn't get one. But it turned out okay, since we weren't going to be there but for a few days. There were plenty of restaurants to eat lunch, and after he went to work I had a dollar hamburger at a McDonald's two doors over. So we ended up not really needing the micro-fridge anyway.

There was one other thing that my husband wanted to do, but he wasn't feeling well one day, and it was rather wet and unpleasant the other day. So that left the day that we were leaving, which was a bit windy, and we decided that we didn't want to walk around in the wind anyway. But since the many point of going to the place was to take pictures of buildings and houses, we were going to drive over anyway and just get out of the car for the occasional photo. Only he didn't make any notes on how to get to the place, and he got lost, and almost an hour later we had to give up and head home.

We stopped at one of those giant sports stores, cause I had heard that they sometimes have glow in the dark paint and small amounts of glow in the dark yarn. That seems a strange place to find such things, but it is sometimes used to catch fish. They were out of the yarn, and I didn't buy any paint. This kind of paint has to be heated, and so it wasn't going to help me in any of my current projects. Still, it is good to know for future reference. We looked at the aquarium and the taxidermy stuff, and then we got back on the road.

I had no special plans for lunch, but with the husband not feeling well we thought Chinese food would be nice if we could find one, and we did. It was a really good one, so unfortunately I ate too much and got sleepy. He got sleepy too, and we had to stop and get him a Red Bull. From there it wasn't long before we were in Waco, were we stopped at the bakery. My husband is one of those people who actually likes fruitcake, but we don't buy any of these, because even the tiny ones are fifteen dollars. Regular and large cakes are in the thirty to fifty dollars range. Anyway, we bought a few cookies and got back on the road. Twenty minutes later we stopped in West and bought some focaccia bread.

So we got home just in time to deal with five o'clock traffic, but it wasn't bad. And while there are all kinds of things that we might have done then, we were tired and decided to stay in and watch TV and such. So that was pretty much it, except for the knitting, which I will write about later.