Friday, December 04, 2009

Weekend in Texas: San Antonio mit Mona & Tim

On the road again! Just back fromt the New Orleans trip on Sunday, on Friday it was time to leave the state again. This time the destination was San Antonio in Texas. It is about 4 hours flight time away from Philly.



Mona's husband Tim had to attend a tradeshow in San Antonio for the whole weekend. As the hotel was paid by the company anyway and had two queensize beds, Tim suggested that we should come as we just had to pay the flight...No big deal, the ticket was just $180 return....BARGAIN!!!
Mona and me left work on Friday at 3pm for the airport. We didn't have a direct flight, so we flew from Philly up to Chicago and then down to San Antonio. Quite tired and exhausted, we arrived there around11.30pm and Tim was picked us up from the airport. We stayed at the Marriott at the Riverwalk and the view from the balkony was amazing.
The next morning, Mona and me slept long, while Tim had to work at the show. Before we left the hotel, we grabbed a coffee from Starbucks and off we went to find a nice spot for breaky or we better say lunch...
We took the next stairs down to the Riverwalk where all the bars, restaurants and shops are. It looks so beautiful! And it is still so green because of all the palm trees and cypresses and tropical plants. We found a nice place to eat along the river. The weather was perfect, sunshine and clear sky but unsusual cold for this region, around 3°C. But it was perfect to stroll along the Riverwalk and explore the City.



San Antonio is very close to the Mexican Border, so you can see already a lot of Mexican influence in the architecture and also in the shops. They also have a Mexican market which is very colorful and where they also performed traditional Mexican dances when we went there.
It was coincidence that exactly at this day, there was a German x-mas market going on....No question: Mona and me went down there!! After my disappointing experience last year in England with "big European x-mas market" I didn't expect that much which was exactly the right attitude. The market was organised by the German community in San Antonio and they had around 20 booths but some of them really with German products like fruit cake, homemade x-mas cookies or selfmade mulled wine. Of course, we had to try the mulled wine and it was really good!!! We also bought some Santa Clause hats and put them on for the rest of the day.



Then we went back to the hotel and chilled at the pool and in the whirlpool while we were waiting for Tim.
In the evening we went for dinner with Tim's team members to a Mexican restaurant. That was so nice and soooo colorful! The food was good, the Margherita's as well and from time to time, a Mexican band came in to sing some songs.
After that, most of the colleagues went to the hotel but 2 went with Mona, Tim and me wanted to stroll along the river during the night as it looked so romantic during the night. The decorated all the trees with holiday lights and set up 'luminarias' along the river. 'Luminarias' are little paper bags, filled with sand and a candle in it. There were tons of them...



Then, we went to a bar Tim recommend before. It is called 'Howl at the moon' and there exist a few of these bars in America. They have 2 pianos, drums, a guitar and a bass guitar on the stage and people perform all the famous songs in a very broad range. They play everything from the 70's to today, Bon Jovi, Britney Spears, Uncle Cracker, Village People, The Killers.....and so on...All is live and the interesting thing is that they switch instruments with the blink of an eye. For the one song, the girl was singing and playing the piano, for the next song, she jumps behind the drums. This makes it very interesting and they just played soooo good! The whole bar was rocking!!



As we had such a great night, Mona and me slept in again the next morning while Tim again had to get up earlier..hihihi
We grabbed a coffee at Starbuck's again (it was so practical, there was a shop in our hotel lobby) and hopped on one of the Riverwalk cruise boats to make a river tour around San Antonio.



Afterwards we met Tim for dinner in the 'Rainforrest cafe' and had our breaky/lunch there. In this restaurant, everything is decorated like in the rainforrest and they have animated animals which start to make noises and movements at certain times. More for kids but still an interesting experience.
After the dinner, Tim went back to the show and we strolled around the shopping mall to buy accessories for the upcoming farewell party of Watchi and Albi next weekend.
At 4pm it was time to return to the hotel, pack and getting ready for the airport. Tim brought us to airport at 5pm. Again we didn't have a direct flight, so we flew from San Antonio to Dallas and then connected to Philly. We were so lucky on the second flight as we had 3 seats for the 2 of us, so we could make us bit more comfy and try to sleep. Finally, we arrived in Philly at 1 and returned to Mona's appartment at 1.30am in the night.
This weekend was very short but we had such a brilliant time together and the city is defintily recommendable!!! So again, all worth it!

You can find more pictures on my digital photoalbum:

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