We loaded up the car and headed out about 9:45am towards San Antonio for our Spring Break getaway! We stopped briefly for a quick bite to take with us for breakfast and of course Lara's Iced Coffee and hit the road! On the way to San Antonio we drove through Temple and stopped for a quick lunch at Chipotle. Lara and I got a yummy veggie bowl and Cristian had his usual cheese quesadillas with black beans and rice. There was this poor lady trying to carry 2 big take out bags of food and 5 drinks by herself and people were standing around her agitated that she was taking so long near the soda fountain. I got up and offered her help to her car. Where has kindness gone to these days?

From Temple we drove through San Marcos and stopped at a McDonald's for, you guessed it, Lara's Iced Coffee, and saw the funniest thing! Nothing like a cheap date for a dinner and a movie at McDonald's eh? Get your Redbox rental and hit the drive thru $1 menu together! How funny!

We checked into the Marriott at a little after 5pm and hit up the cool little Bistro they had there for a snack. We have a free $10 per day at the Bistro during our stay.

At the Riverwalk they dyed the river green in celebration for St Patty's Day so we boarded a trolley and headed over to the Riverwalk!

We took the narrated boat ride around Riverwalk which was nice but it was near impossible to actually take any pictures. Oh and the highlight of Riverwalk? I got pooped on by a bird. My camera bag got pooped on by a bird. Did I mention bird poop?  GROSS!! 

The mass crowd of people elbow to elbow by the Riverwalk and the trash everyone was dropping all over the floor brought back memories of our New Orleans trip and Bourbon Street!  We had put our name on the dinner list at the Iron Cactus.  They had a 1 hour and 45 minute wait.  In order to curb the hunger pains we decided to have some Italian ice cream at Justin's which was a neat hole in the wall type place.  We hit some shops and found Cristian a faux Davey Crockett coonskin cap!  He was stoked!!  We wanted to get a picture of him wearing this really cool Sombrero but he sulked and frowned until we bribed him for a smile and he finally took a happy picture but refused to buy the hat.  Ah well...
Had dinner at the Iron Cactus. The atmosphere was nice, food was pretty good, but service was slow slow slow. I thought we would never leave that place. Lara and I split the Spinach Quesadillas because we were still pretty full and had some chips and queso. We did get a chance to take some fun and crazy pictures though!

Finding the yellow route trolley to come back to the hotel was a feat in itself.  After walking for a good 45 minutes to the stop (it took us a while to find one) we discovered they had closed it so we headed to the stop they listed as an alternate.  25 minutes later we arrived and it too had been closed.  Rinse, lather, and repeat a 3rd time.  We came across a Wax place that had Forrest Gump and Bumblebee made of Wax - that was pretty cool!

We finally found a cop who was sweet enough to help us.  He flagged down a different bus and asked him to take us to the St Mary's trolley stop which would have been quite a trek to walk. We were so thankful to be on a bus that at this point I didn't care where it took us!  As we sat down we noticed that this bus had a seat on it dedicated to Rosa Parks!!  Now, what are the chances of something like that happening?

We made it to the 4th trolley stop and then waited another 30 minutes for a trolley.  We finally made it back to the hotel at close to midnight just in time to unpack, set the alarm, and plan for our day at Sea World on Sunday.

Looking forward to Day 2!

Cheers,

M E