10 Days In San Antonio TX – Here’s What We Did

Having left Corpus Christi, Shae and I moved on to San Antonio where we spent ten nights.

We picked San Antonio for the end of November as they have a boat parade along the river the day after Thanksgiving which looked like fun. We’d also heard that it was a great city to visit overall, so we decided to spend ten days there.

Here’s everything that we got up to while in San Antonio, Texas.

Grand Hyatt

The first three nights were spent at the Grand Hyatt using free night certificates. Two of those came from our Hyatt credit cards and the other from earning Explorist status.

It was a pretty nice hotel, made even better now that I have their top tier Globalist status. That meant we were upgraded to a one bedroom suite and had club lounge access. You can check out our full review of the Grand Hyatt San Antonio here.

River Walk

My favorite part of San Antonio was the River Walk. This is a 15 mile stretch of the river, with five miles of it being downtown. We ended up walking along here nearly every day as it’s much prettier than walking around the city at street level.

It’s a great place to amble along, plus there are tons of restaurants and bars where you can stop for something to eat or drink. Many of them have pet-friendly patio areas which was perfect for us as we’re traveling with our dog.

New Friends

A few days before we arrived in San Antonio, we received an email from a couple of our email subscribers. They were going to be in San Antonio during the same dates we were, so they wondered if we’d like to meet up.

So a couple of days after arriving in the city, we met up with Larry and Rhonda at Rita’s On The River for lunch. They’re from Virginia where we used to live and they’d read about our 50 state road trip before we’d even set off after we appeared in the local paper. It was fun getting to know them and we’re hoping to meet up again when we’re back in Virginia next year.

If you’d like to get email updates about our travels once a week like Larry and Rhonda, you can sign up here.

Cascade Caverns

After checking out of the Grand Hyatt, we moved to an Airbnb for a week. We’d picked a larger place with a kitchen as Shae’s mom and stepdad were coming to visit over Thanksgiving.

The afternoon before they arrived, Shae and I headed to Cascade Caverns in nearby Boerne. We’d enjoyed visiting Inner Space Cavern near Austin the previous month, but Cascade Caverns weren’t as beautiful as that.

Having said that, we had a fun tour guide and it was interesting learning about the cavern’s history. One of the most fascinating parts for me was looking up at the ceiling where there were solution domes. These were caused by the caverns being flooded at various times in the past, with the whirlpools eroding away the stone.

I think Shae’s favorite part was seeing the tiny tri-colored bats that were only a couple of inches long. Some of the bats were shimmery due to the calcite in the cave.

The Alamo

Once Shae’s mom and stepdad had arrived, we all went to the Alamo which can be found in downtown San Antonio. Growing up in the UK, I’d heard of the Alamo but didn’t know anything about it, so it was a good opportunity to learn some more US history.

There are guided and audio tours available for a fee, but you can also take a self-guided tour for free, so that’s what we did.

Scooters

If you’ve walked around any large (or not-so-large) cities over the past year, you’ll likely have seen people zipping around on electric scooters.

We’d not tried them yet, so one evening the four of us decided to test them out rather than walk a couple of miles back to the Airbnb. We used the Lime scooters that cost $1 per ride plus $0.15 per minute, but they  had Bird and Razor scooters everywhere too.

Oh man, they’re so much fun! I managed to get up to 16.5 mph on the road which felt faster than that. The scooters have a button you press down or release that controls how fast you travel along – most of the time we went much slower than that.

One problem we have with scooters is that our dog Truffles hates them. As in she turns into Cujo whenever there’s one moving. We popped her in her doggy backpack and brought her along for the ride, hoping it would be some good immersion therapy.

Shae ended up traveling at the back with her to begin with, as she started going nuts at me when riding behind them. Eventually she did a little better and stopped barking at us when we were behind her, but she’s still not a fan of them when we’re walking along and other people pass by on them.

Tower of the Americas

While I was working one afternoon, everyone else went to check out Tower of the Americas. San Antonio didn’t seem like it’d be a beautiful city from that high up, so I wasn’t worried about missing out.

Tickets are $12 to go up, but there’s a way to pay much less. They have a restaurant and bar in the tower and you don’t need a ticket to get to them. The three of them therefore went for Happy Hour drinks and a snack, which meant they got to see the views for about half the price of regular tickets.

Waco

San Antonio is about three hours away from the city of Waco. Shae’s mom and stepdad are real estate brokers and appraisers, so they love all things HGTV. That meant they wanted to visit Waco as it’s home to Chip & Joanna Gaines, stars of Fixer Upper.

The route takes you through Austin, so we stopped off once again at Round Rock Donuts to get one of their big-ass Texas-sized donuts.

Shae and I aren’t Fixer Upper people, so we dropped the two of them off at Magnolia Market and headed off to Waco Mammoth National Monument while we waited.

That didn’t take long, so we headed back to pick them up. We saw the silos which I’m assuming is where Chip and Joanna store all their paint 😉 I’m also pretty sure that if you touch the silos, you’ll be healed of all your ailments.

While waiting for them to get what they needed in the gift shop, we randomly bumped into someone we knew from years ago in Virginia who’s since moved to Texas.

After they’d gotten their Fixer Upper fix, we headed to the Dr Pepper Museum. If you ever visit there, check Groupon as they had a good deal on four tickets with four sodas that saved us about 50%.

Seeing as our last name is Pepper, this was a photo opportunity that was too good to pass up.

They didn’t have any T-shirts designs we liked with that slogan on it, so we made do with a bumper sticker instead. I’m not a bumper sticker kind of person, but we’ve somehow accumulated several of them on the road trip so far.

On the way back from Waco, we stopped at Salt Lick BBQ. That’s a restaurant just south of Austin which loads of people had recommended to us. It was tasty, although I still think Rodney Scott’s in Charleston SC and Swadley’s BBQ in Oklahoma City OK were better.

King William Historic District

Continuing the home theme from Waco, the four of us wandered over to the King William Historic District to check out the neighborhood. There were lots of cool-looking homes, with several of them having landmark signs explaining their historic noteworthiness.

Just as a random aside, that area had a ton of enormous acorns. As it is, the acorn on the left is slightly larger than a regular acorn if that gives any sense of scale.

Thanksgiving

Soon enough Thanksgiving Day was upon us and we had a feast. Breakfast began with a big-ass 3 lb cinnamon roll from Lulu’s Bakery which was extremely tasty.

Seeing as we were in an Airbnb with a kitchen, we were able to prepare all our food. Smoked turkey, stuffing, potatoes, candied yams, cornbread, rolls, green beans, cranberry jelly and sauce, gravy, pumpkin pie and probably other stuff I can’t remember – we had it all.

This year – as in past years – Truffles was thankful for turkey. So much so that she wore her ‘I’m perky for turkey’ T-shirt. And played with her turkey leg toy. And ate lots of turkey.

Mom Time

Seeing as Shae’s mom was in town for the week, the two of them went off to do some stuff together. They went for lunch along the River Walk…

…went Black Friday shopping, got Shipley’s Donuts up in New Braunfels…

…and got matching T-shirts from Buc-ee’s – our new favorite gas stop!

Boat Cruise

On Black Friday the four of us went on a boat cruise along the river.

We were fortunate to have an interesting and informative tour guide, so I did a Facebook live video:

River Parade

As I mentioned earlier, the main reason we chose San Antonio for Thanksgiving was for the river parade. That takes place on the evening of Black Friday, with dozens of decorated boats floating down the river.

Special shout out to Mad Dogs British Pub for the most fun float / boat of the night. They had a fun party boat thing going on (not pictured below) and we enjoyed their music.

The parade coincides with the city turning on its Christmas lights. That made a nighttime walk along the River Walk even more beautiful.

We then headed over to Travis Park to check out the Christmas tree. They were showing Elf on a big screen in the park but we had to head back to our Airbnb. Shae’s mom and stepdad were flying home at 5am, so had to pack and get up early.

Buc-ee’s

Shae and I left San Antonio later that morning after dropping them off at the airport. We made one final stop at Buc-ee’s as there don’t seem to be any west of San Antonio. Shae had mentioned they had delicious brisket breakfast tacos, but we arrived to late for those.

We therefore had to make do with brisket sandwiches which were surprisingly tasty for gas station sandwiches. Truffles thought so too…

And that was our ten days in San Antonio – one of our favorite cities in Texas so far.