Day 48 & 49 - San Antonio, TX

We stayed at the Hyatt on Riverwalk which was in a fantastic location so that we could walk everywhere. We arrived early evening so decided to head straight out for dinner. The hotel recommended Rosarro's which is a little way off the tourist area (about a 20 minute walk) but we were told that it was where the locals go for Mexican Food. The food was amazing, my favourite being the yummy salsa which was difficult to stop eating and I nearly didn't make it to the main meal!

The walk back was a very slow walk, more like a waddle due to how much we had eaten but it did give us a chance to take a couple of pictures and to take in some of the less touristy areas of San Antonio.

It was a Saturday evening so once we had made it back to the hotel and walked off some of the food, we decided to take our first walk down Riverwalk. We stopped to listen to some live music and have a very large 1/2 price beer in the Biergarten. You might be able to see in the video that all the staff are wearing exaggerated German outfits, the girls skirts barely covered their bums! Lee looked on very disapprovingly.

We then headed to the English bar where the party seemed to be happening. We only had one drink in this bar as we were both tired and needed our beds but we agreed we needed to come back the next day and check out how English the English theme really was!

The next day, we headed to the Historic Market Square the a place called Mi Tierra which I'd read online as selling the best TexMex breakfast in the whole of Texas! We haven't tried many TexMex breakfasts, this was our first but it was awesome! Although it was a Sunday, the market square was bustling, there were so many stalls inside and outside, music and dance and so much food from different street vendors, including huge Michalados (see the video for what one of these is!) We've never been to Mexico but we imagined the sights, small and atmosphere was similar to a busy Mexican market, it was a lot of fun!

We headed back to Riverwalk via La Villita, a historic arts village. It was very quiet here with a lot of the shops closed, maybe everyone was at the Historic Market Square!

Once we had reached Riverwalk, we stopped off at Dick's Last Resort for a drink. We already knew about Dick's as there is one in San Diego that we have visited previously. The theme is 'grumpy and rude'. The waiters are grumpy, they expect the customers to be grumpy, you have to wear rude / offensive paper made hats from the waiters (Lee somehow managed to get away with not doing this!) and you had better hope its not your birthday as they really make you feel un-special! But its all good fun, and you end up laughing a lot despite the theme! Seeing the reactions of people who had never been to a Dick's before was especially good fun!

Next it was off to the Alamo. It was free to get into and whilst you can't take pictures inside the church itself, you can take pictures and videos in the grounds and museums. We enjoyed the Alamo and learning about the history of Texas.

Opposite The Alamo is a bar called Menger Bar. It is an exact replicate of the pub in the House of Lords. Having never seen the House of Lords pub and not being able to find any pictures on Google, we can't verify this but I would be a little surprised if House of Lords pub had a moose head on the wall or American Football hats behind the bar, maybe a little American personality has been added?!

Our hotel had a lovely rooftop pool so we spent sometime up there cooling off and checking out the view before heading back to Riverwalk to do one of the boat tours. Although the taxi service around the river is cheaper and with the same company, we actually wanted the tour so we could have someone explain to us what we're looking at. We'd also heard that the water taxi can take up to an hour to arrive and when we saw the queue of people waiting for them, we could see this was more than likely.

You get into a boat with 50 other people which sounds like a squeeze but we actually had plenty of room. The captain of the boat took us around the Riverwalk waterways, explaining some of the history, facts and pointing out points of interest. It was really enjoyable.

The tour went past the San Fernando Cathedral and the captain mentioned that there was a laser show on tonight. We decided to check it out and we were so glad we did. It was the best thing we had seen / done in San Antonio! Lasers and lights are projected onto the cathedral, giving a potted history of the city. Check out the video for a taster but it was so good!

We finished off the evening by heading back to Riverwalk to check out the British Bar. It's called Mad Dogs and actually, it did a good job! The scene they have tried to create is that you get out of the London Underground at Mad Dogs station. Outside you have some recognisable British sites, including the outside of a British pub. The outside part is where the American bar is situated. You can go into the British pub where there is another bar and actually, they did a really good job of making it feel British. There were bar stools, brown leather seats, stain glass windows and that good old pub smell. Our only criticism was the kilts that all the waitresses were wearing, that's Scottish!