It really is true that Hubby and I don’t usually vacation in cities. We actually tend to avoid cities. So why go to San Antonio when there’s so much other stuff and places in Texas we could have explored?
Before we were married, Hubby had spent a lot of time in San Antonio, as he played a pretty big role in the design of the Marriott Rivercenter hotel. For those who don’t know, he is a plumbing engineer. Architects design buildings, he is responsible for designing the plumbing systems that make the buildings function.
He enjoyed his visits to San Antonio, but had never really done the touristy thing while there. In fact, since he was a single father with two young daughters, he didn’t have much extra time to linger and usually flew down and back in the same day. And he’d never seen the completed project.
He was quite excited to see “his” hotel.
We don’t usually stay in big, fancy hotels. We’re more mid-range-accomodation types. But we decided to make an exception for this trip.
It really is a gorgeous property. The hotel’s web site describes it as:
…Marriott Rivercenter, a magnificent 38 story hotel on the River Walk…just steps away from the world famous San Antonio Riverwalk, premier shopping, dining and entertainment destination.
The River Walk is rather interesting. The “river” is actually a flood bypass channel. In the late 1930s, folks began to realize that having a sort-of-river that meandered through their city was kinda cool. The River Walk was born. Slowly but surely over the years, the River Walk became a park, and a garden, and, today, is reported to be the number one tourist attraction in Texas. (If you want to know more, you can visit the River Walk web site.)
The park is situated below street level, which is sorta cool. Especially if you know nothing about the city and just happen to be exploring its streets.
If there’s one thing I do love about cities, it’s all of the colors, angles, and textures you see.
Have I mentioned that it was HOT in San Antonio that day? The heat isn’t unusual. I mean, latitude-wise, San Antonio is further south than New Orleans. But it was also humid, which made it gross. There was a breeze, so the air wasn’t nearly as thick as it could have been. But it was uncomfortable. Especially for someone like me who hates sticky heat.
We decided to find a place for lunch. We used our Yelp apps, as we usually do when exploring new places, and settled on Schilo’s Deli, which had a four-star review.
Unfortunately, the rating was wrong. We were completely underwhelmed by the food. The root beer was cool and the interior was nice and kitschy, which I loved. But the food was nothing to write home about. It was completely mediocre. We did, however, really enjoy the air conditioning.
After lunch, we settled back into tourist mode and headed over to the Tower of the Americas.
The Tower of the America’s is a lot like Seattle’s Space Needle. Except it’s not as ridiculously expensive.
The view from the top — the tower is 750 feet tall — was nice.
Just like the Space Needle, there’s an outside observation deck that was REALLY windy. It was much warmer than it was when we visited Seattle in February.
This next series of shots shows what Hubby looked like in the wind.
After we enjoyed the view for a bit, we headed back to the hotel. By then, it was late enough in the day that we could check in.
Seemed like a good time for some rest and relaxation.
I’ll close with this selfie captured later in the day as we headed out for dinner.
The final post from Texas will be shared one day…