San Antonio Riverwalk

Now for my favorite part of vacation, the San Antonio Riverwalk.  Have you been there?  After a long soaking day at Sea World, we ran back to the hotel and changed clothesc cleaned up and set off to the River Walk.  You see, the weather was supposed to get bad that night - severe thunderstorms - so we figured we would go eat at The Riverwalk just in case the weather was too bad the next day. 

We parked downtown.  I had seen so many pictures of The Riverwalk, and especially of the restaurants with the colorful umbrellas.  This is Casa Rio. 

Y'all know I love me some Mexican food, right?  This place was amazing!  Best Mexican food EVER!  We sat under the bridge you can see on the right side of the photo.  C fed the ducks the whole time we were eating, the river boats floated by, the kids were well behaved, it was wonderful!  Then, it started to rain just as we were finishing.  We paid and walked as fast as we could to the car, which luckily was only a block away.  By the time we drove the 8 miles back to the hotel, it was hailing.  We had crazy bad thunderstorms and were under a tornado watch for several hours.  Luckily the tornado that hit Bexar County that night, missed our hotel. 

The next morning, the weather had cleared and we went back to the River Walk.  I was so excited to be able to ride in the river boats and take the tour of the historic river.  It was absolutely gorgeous!

Casa Rio from the river boat

Did you know that San Antonio was settled by mostly Mexican and German?  Really?  German?  I had no idea.  That church in the background is German, I think. 

This is a stage on the river where they have concerts.  The audience sits on stone bleachers on the other side of the river.  Cool, huh? 

This is a tiny island in the river.  It's not much bigger than my van.  We were told that it's supposed to be good luck to get married here under that big old cypress tree.  They have around 350 weddings here a year.  WOW!  That's a lot of weddings!

Ben Milam cypress tree, the largest and oldest on the Riverwalk.  Texas soldier rallied troops to fight against the Mexican army and was shot by a sniper that was in this tree.  You can read more about it here. 

Isn't that pretty?  Know what I loved the most?  All the cute little restaurants all along the Riverwalk.  Saltgrass Steakhouse, Chili's, Rainforest Cafe, etc., all lined up along the river.  There was so much more character than the stand alone restaurants around here.  So, so pretty.  Hubby thought it was funny that I was so excited about the restaurants.  What can I say?  I love food and I've got the backside to prove it.

This is our River Guide, Alejandro.  He was awesome.

So, you wanna see the Alamo?  Yeah, me too.  I didn't realize that it was just smack dab in the middle of town and there wouldn't be much parking.  We had already loaded the car when we headed to the Alamo. 

So, we drove by.  I refused to pay another $10 for parking AGAIN.  So, we headed to the beach.  I'll show you those pictures tomorrow.  They are my favorite pictures from the trip. 

Happy Wednesday bloggy friends!