SAN ANTONIO: DAY ONE

Our Balcony at Hotel Valencia, Overlooking Houston Street and Facing the Old Texas Theatre

So, you'll never guess where we went first, after checking into our hotel in San Antonio. Why, to an art supply store, of course! I checked ahead of time and found one called Herweck's, which was in walking distance to our hotel.

 
Fortunately for me, it turned out to be a great one! I was able to get the last couple of things on my Art Camp shopping list -- Golden acrylic glazing liquid and Stabilo mark-all pencils -- and several more of the Sharpie water-based paint pens that an artist friend recently gave me, and which I fell madly in love with. As an added bonus, all the Golden products were 25-35% off as part of their back-to-school sale, AND I got to pay for everything with my super-dooper gift card that was part of my Visit San Antonio prize package! Now, I'm wondering, why the heck didn't I buy a whole lot more? (Head Slap!)

Afterwards we spent the afternoon exploring the downtown area at street level. If you've never been there, you might not know that there are two downtown San Antonios, stacked one on top of the other, and they are worlds apart! One is what you can see from the sidewalks at street level, and the other is the lush, shady world that greets you when you descend the steps down to the riverwalk level. We'll get to that later. Meanwhile, we were checking out shops like the Buckhorn Saloon, and enjoying some of the interesting local characters that were hanging about.

Now it may be autumn where you are, but this week, in San Antonio, it was still hotter 'n Hades, and we had managed to work up a powerful thirst! So we headed over to Schilo's deli, where you can still get homemade root beer in a frosty mug...

and make a phone call from a telephone booth!

After a short siesta, we cleaned up and headed downstairs for our lovely three-course dinner at the Citrus restaurant, there in our hotel, which was also part of our prize package. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a single picture! Almost everyone there, it seems, was on their way to the fabulous Majestic Theatre afterwards, which is right next to the Valencia. You'll never guess what is showing there right now. Book of Mormon! If only we'd known, instead of buying those tickets to take all the kids to see it in Austin next week, we could have booked two rooms for two nights at the hotel, instead of one room for four nights, and brought the kids with us to see it there in San Antonio!

Pictures from when we were there a couple of years ago.

Ah well, it's going to be a hoot 'n a holler wherever we see it, 'cause we'll get to experience it all over again, through their first-timers' eyes!