San Antonio, Texas

Saturday 26 January 2013. Australia Day. Well it's practically over at home, but we are on 'our' time.

Trevor hangs our big flag across the front of the RV.

We speak to the kids at home. They have been to the sky show. Mace is getting excited about his birthday on the 28th.  He will be 45!  I am sure he thinks the sky show is put on just for his birthday!

We are invited to a night of horse racing at the RV Park starting at 7pm. Ladies have to wear a hat! That will be a challenge.
We have a rental car for the weekend so we do some shopping in the morning. It is nice to be able to access a greater range of shops than the usual culprit - Walmart - when we are in the RV. In the afternoon we drive into down town San Antonio to explore the Market Square - El Mercado. It is fascinating. We find some local Mexican folk dancing; lots of lively music.

San Antonio is one of the most historic cities in Texas, if not the most historic.  It is also a very beautiful city. Predominantly Hispanic and Mexican in character, it was once the home of the Comanche Indians. Spanish missionaries founded missions there in the 1700's. Mission San Antonio de Valero was later converted into a military outpost and renamed the Alamo, the site of the most heroic episode of the Texan revolution.

Familiar names?

Tower of the Americas

It is easy driving in the city on the weekend!






I become a milliner! A hat to wear to the horse racing night!

We get dressed up. There are some great hats. A large number of RVers in the park are 'permanents' ... they come from the north and stay for the winter. They have clearly had such events before and told me they had a day of hat making during the week!

It is a fun evening.  The races are set out on a large platform and the horses are moved according to the throw of a dice. If your horse wins you are paid in chips. Those chips go into a hat at the end of the races and prizes are drawn from the hat. We won 4 of the 10 prizes going!! It became embarrassing. We returned  2 of the prizes to be redrawn. We attributed our luck to the fact that it was Australia Day! A very profitable evening. We won a bottle of red wine and a cheese board.

The next morning we set out for Fredericksburg which is about 90 miles north of San Antonio. The town, set in the Hill Country was first settled by German immigrants in 1846. It is home to the National Museum of the Pacific War which traces the history of US military activities in the South Pacific during World War II. It was also the birthplace of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz.

We browsed the quaint shops and boutiques along Main Street.

On the way back to San Antonio we drive through Comfort, another small 'antique' town.


There are some real gems!

Back into the traffic as we get closer to down town San Antonio.

That night we have dinner at a Mexican restaurant across the road from the RV park. It was somewhat challenging but thankfully the menu had  pictures of the dishes. We ordered far too much so I asked for a box.  It was quite nice heated up the next day!