For Kit’s birthday, took a one-night trip to San Antonio.  With her job, Kit can’t take a long weekend, so we had to keep this weekend trip short and sweet.  This girls had not really seen the Alamo before, except maybe quick drive by.  Claire had heard a lot about it in Texas history in school, so she was interested to see it.

It was a quick trip, but we did it right.  We stayed at the Crockett Hotel right behind the Alamo.  Luckily, we got a 4th-story room directly overlooking the Alamo grounds.  For a while after checking in, we all sat and gazed past the old stone walls at the families wandering around the Alamo grounds.  For a while at night, it was quiet on the streets except for the sounds of horse draw carriages clomping by below us.  It was like being in 1888 for a while.  Then the San Antonio Spurs won the NBS Western Conference championship, which resulted in celebratory yelling and horn honking all through the night.  This was a nice sound too, and luckily it did not wake up the girls.

Molly’s says her favorite part of the trip was the water walls leading past the Hyatt Regency to the Riverwalk (in Molly’s words, “the big water things”).  She wanted to just look at the flowing water and kept asking to go back.  The water walls were big enough and on all sides, giving the feeling of being sort of in the water yourself.  The water was loud but had a nice calming effect.  Then a series of small bridges and rivers inside the hotel lead to the Riverwalk.  I have enjoyed this amazing hotel lobby since I was young, and it was nice to see Molly appreciate it too.

Claire’s says she liked the water wall too, but her favorite part was the Riverwalk, the main part with all the restaurants, bridges, tress, music, etc.  It was such a quick trip that we had to do basically a quick walk through, but we covered the whole main circle part of the Riverwalk on Saturday evening and even had dinner on the river.  We also stopped by La Villita and did some window shopping in the old village and wandered our way back to the Travis.

The next morning, we visited the Alamo.  It was nice to just simply walk across the street and into the Alamo.  We spent couple of hours in the Alamo.  The girls liked poking around.  Molly did get a little impatient as we read the various history plaques.  Eventually Claire got worn down too.  Kit was enjoying it more than anyone, which is good since this was her birthday trip.

Then it was off to the southern reach of the Riverwalk.  This is the more park-ish part than runs through the old King William residential neighborhood.  We explored King William and the river.  People were kayaking on the river, and there were lots of joggers.  This was the part especially meant for Kit.  She has always said she liked this part of town and the river.  Claire, who loved the more dense central part of the river, was somewhat skeptical even before we headed down to King William.  “I know what’s going to happen.  We’re going to walk around a look at a lot of boring old houses and not do anything fun.”  She and Molly got a little sluggish on this stretch, but they seemed to have fun too.  We then had an awesome brunch at Liberty Bar, I think the best meal I had in many months.

By then it was Sunday afternoon, and we had to head home.  The girls really wanted to see the Riverwalk again, but we were out of time.  We never even had a chance to swim in the hotel’s pool.  I felt like we had at least a week’s worth of stuff left to do in S.A. (more Riverwalk, El Mercado, La Villita, Fiesta Texas, kids stuff at the Witte Museum, other museums, and so on) but normal life called.  At least it’s not a far drive if we want to come back.

We didn’t do a great job with the pictures on this little trip, but here are a few.