Mike and I go to Austin, Texas every year for the SXSW Interative Festival. It’s nice to see that the New York Times have noticed how entertaining the city is:
Since Austin is so close to San Antonio, a visit to those two cities is a great trip. Here are all the entries in which we’ve talked about Austin, Texas:
You can see my links to San Antonio here:
We stayed at The Menger Hotel in San Antonio back in September of 2006. It was a wonderful stay. I think this was the first time I snapped a photo of hotel SWAG while it was in the room.
The presentation was so nice with the basket and the washcloths that I took a photo of it and started a tradition for myself of taking pictures of hotel SWAG in the hotel. The SWAG is labeled, “Gilchrist and Soames.” According to their website:
“A leading manufacturer of luxurious shampoos, soaps and body lotions. Gilchrist & Soames products are found internationally in upscale hotels and resorts.”
I have an entire collection of these and have never used them. Ever since I set up my Toiletry Bag, I haven’t had the need to use the hotel SWAG. That doesn’t stop me from collecting them, though.
What do I do with all the hotel SWAG that I collect, though? Stay tuned tomorrow for hints on what to do with your hotel SWAG.
Last year, when we visited San Antonio, we took a tour of the San Antonio Botanical Garden. I filmed a walking video for Starling Fitness and it is finally ready!
I’m offering this DVD for $5 including shipping and handling in the continental U.S. If you live elsewhere contact me and we’ll figure out how much it will cost to ship to you.
Order Starling Fitness Walking Videos Here
Here is a glimpse of what the walk will be like:
Video Description:
I was lost and unprepared for the hot Texas weather, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the garden’s beauty. From the native Texas grassland areas to the indoor fern grottos, I filmed all that the San Antonio Botanical Garden had to offer.
Wander along the garden paths. Watch the birds fly past you and squawk at you from the trees. Smell the herbs and flowers in the garden for the blind. Breathe in the humid air in the fern grotto. Explore the historical homes of Texas’ past. Chase down the golf cart. Can you keep up?
If you are missing the beautiful greenery that Texas has to offer, you can enjoy it every day with this video.
So many times when we travel, I have a list of activities that we are going to do each day. We rush from tourist attraction to historical site to museum in a frenzy and when we get home, we’re more tired than when we left. How about a vacation that is the opposite of that? How about actually relaxing on my vacation? Hey, that’s an innovative idea. Here’s how to do it.
With a setting that looks like a postcard, the Casa Rio sits on the Riverwalk attracting tourists with the scent of their food and their singing. I live in a town with excellent Mexican food, so I expected touristy faire at Casa Rio and to be honest, that’s what I got. The food was good, but nothing was even near the spiciness that I’m used to. I enjoyed the enchiladas and queso sauce on my chips, but nothing brought tears to my eyes.
What I enjoyed most was the singing.
We were surprised at the reasonable prices of the food, so we sprang the ten bucks for a song. We figured we would have paid twice what we were paying in any other touristy place, so we were happy to splurge. The group singing played typical songs that are requested all the time like La Bamba and Tijuana Taxi, but they did it in such a congenial manner that I had a blissful moment when they were playing. Friendly AND professional, all at once, I felt so grateful that I had paid for a song. It was worth it for that moment of Zen.
Where: Casa Rio
430 E Commerce St
San Antonio, TX
Google Map
Phone: (210) 225-6718
Fax: (210) 225-2216
Hours:
Sunday – Saturday
11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.
In January
During our trip to San Antonio, Mike and I took a break and went to Michaels Arts and Crafts. We went there to look at arts supplies and just relax. We have Michaels in Salt Lake City, so we thought it would be a familiar reminder of home. Instead, it was a very different store. There were two full aisles of ribbons in bright, primary colors. It was so interesting, I took photos. Michaels announced to the residents of Texas that they were your Homecoming Headquarters, but I had never seen anything like this for Homecoming. What was all this stuff?
While I looked at all the ribbons, flowers and megaphones, I became more and more confused. I asked one guy who worked at service desk what it was all about, but he was unable to explain it to me. I returned to the ribbons. A kindly woman said to me, “Ah, it’s Homecoming Time. They’ve got to get their mums ready.” I pounced on her like a housecat left alone too often. With some coaxing, Joan Anderson was willing to explain it all to me.
Texas sure does love their high school football. Using the artificial mums, ribbons and other decorations, you can create a Homecoming Mum. They are for girls and they wear them to the Homecoming game. It’s not for the dance, just the game (you get real flowers for the dance). This is only for football. Basketball doesn’t get this kind of attention.
I don’t know if this is still the case, but Joan says that the boys’ mothers would make the mums so the boys could give them to the girls they like best. A girl could have many different mums from many boys. The girl with the most mums is the most popular.
“Look there. There’s one over here that has three mums on it. This girl would have to be very special, wouldn’t she?”
Part of me wants to get a whole pile of mums from every boy in town. I want to be the girl with the most mums. I want to be very special. This Texan practice feels very guttural to me. I can feel it in my bones and gut. We had nothing like this in Salt Lake City, Utah. Who knew I would find something so unique and foreign a mere 1800 miles away.
For more information:
Homecoming – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: A brief mention of the practice is here.
How to Make Homecoming Mums This site also has a brief history about the tradition.
How to Make Homecoming Mums Elaborate and detailed instructions on how to make them from scratch without the help of Michaels Arts and Crafts.
Sometimes I can film exactly how I see things. I don’t need to edit the footage or anything. The film looks exactly how I remember it. It makes me feel exactly how I did the day I shot the film. That’s what happened this day in September when I filmed the bells at the San Jose Mission.
The bells seemed to tell me that we had to hurry and leave, but I hadn’t even gotten near the church when they rang. I wanted to capture all of it, but my traveling companions were hot and bored. They waited in the car while I hurriedly took photos. I just wanted to relax and listen to the bells.
Where: San Jose Mission
2202 Roosevelt Avenue San Antonio, Texas 78210 – Google Map
Phone: (210) 932-1001
Fax: (210) 534-1106
The GPS system had been mispronouncing street names and tourist attractions throughout the entire trip, but it pronounced Mission Concepcion perfectly. Mission Concepcion had the most visitors we had encountered. At Mission San Juan, we had been alone except for two giggling teenage girls who left quickly. Here, however, I felt self-conscious. There were people sitting in the pews. I felt like an Ugly American snapping photos, but it was too beautiful to let it go undocumented.
They warned us that the mission was constructed for people who are much shorter than the average modern-day man, but Mike still bumped his head on the stone. I checked the stone for blood and his head for a bump. He rubbed the sore spot and shook his head, embarrassed by the accident. My fussing made it worse.
It was quiet outside in the grotto. We enjoyed being alone for a moment and took pictures of the statuary. Overheated, we retreated to the haven of air conditioning in the car and drank our water before we drove away.
Where: Concepcion Mission
807 Mission Rd San Antonio, TX 78210 – Google Map
Phone: (210) 932-1001
Fax: (210) 534-1106
The day we visited the San Juan Mission, we had spent three days consistently overestimating ourselves and ending up dehydrated. The San Juan Mission was no different except we had water waiting for us in the car. We would dash outside, take a few pictures and then retreat back to the car when it was too much for us. I’m sure if we spent a couple of weeks in San Antonio, we would have become acclimated to the heat, but we didn’t have that kind of time.
Fortunately, we didn’t let the heat stop us. San Juan has the most preserved of the mission churches. The inside of the church was beautiful and quiet. The only noises we could hear came from the ceiling fans above our heads. I was surprised at the offerings at the statue of Guadalupe. There were photos, dolls, action figures, jewelry and flowers. I have never seen anything like that in Utah. That’s why traveling is so invigorating. We get to see things we would have never seen at home.
Where: San Juan Mission
9101 Graf Rd, San Antonio, TX – Google Map
Phone: (210) 932-1001
Fax: (210) 534-1106
There are four missions in the San Antonio area. Mike and I were able to visit three of them. San Jose Mission was the first we saw. I was surprised at how much detail survived over the years. It was only a couple days later that we learned that San Jose wasn’t even the best preserved.
The heat was in the lower 100s and the humidity was much higher than my desert skin is used to. After our trip to this mission, I was dehydrated and desperately needed water. When you go to the missions, make sure you pack water and crank up the air conditioning.
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(c) 2005 Michael Moncur, Laura Moncur, and Starling Studios
