Our Vacation to San Antonio

Recently, my family and I had a chance to take a four-day vacation to the nearby city of San Antonio. We had a multitude of activities and I thoroughly enjoyed all of them. Some of them, we drove to because they were simply too far to walk to; however, if the distance wasn't too far, we walked per my request. I love walking in the city and it gave us good exercise during the trip. I have many pictures I took during the trip just so I could share the activities with you, so feel free to enjoy them! (And don't forget you can click the image to make it easier to see!)
The first day, we had to make the trip to San Antonio. Since this is a four-hour drive, we didn't start our first activity until about noon. After the long journey, our dogs were fully ready for the hike up Comanche Lookout we had planned. They soon exhausted their excess energy when we became slightly lost in the many trails that crossed back and forth; however, we did make it to the top of the Lookout eventually.

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Once we made it back down the Lookout, we piled into the van to head to a McDonald's for a cold treat after the hot hike. Meanwhile, our dogs collapsed on the bench seats and took a nap.

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Once we were done, we headed to our hotel to get everything settled in and left the dogs in the hotel room while we went to our next activity, the Market Square. This was basically an area set up so that it mimicked a street in Mexico: lots of shops with Mexican themed products and cheap prices. There were quite a few products that were pretty or interesting to see, although some of them had quite the price tag!

There were many colors of horses. Expensive though!
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A pretty bracelet, I have one similar that I got from Mexico years ago.
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An interesting dragon statue they had for sale. Click image to enlarge.

That's all the pictures I took the first day; however, we did go to a Mediterranean food buffet for dinner. I loved a lot of their food, although some of it wasn't my favorite too. I think I enjoyed the lamb shank and olive leaf wraps the most, and the baklava for dessert. After we got back to the hotel, we decided to go swimming for a little bit in the hotel's pool, which I always love having. Now, onto the next day!
On day two, we started off strong with food from the provided breakfast and coffee bar!

A true Texas-sized waffle! Click image to enlarge.

The first plan for the day was to go to the Natural Bridge Caverns. I took lots of photos, and put the labels on the photos themselves, so make sure to click the images to be able to read the text. If I think anything needed more explanation, I'll put a caption beneath the photo.

These are animals they found in collapsed rubble when first clearing the cave.

I believe the hole was named Purgatory Creek.

The water in the cave appeared green, although the guide said it was not actually colored.

We could not see the bottom, but the size and sloped appearance made it look like the mouth of a dragon's cave.

Some of the formations here are known as "fried eggs" because of the darker center at the top.

That was the end of the cavern tour. In this room, behind me in the photo, they had a water fountain that you could drink cavern water from, purified of course. After a short drive and a quick lunch,we grabbed our dogs from the hotel and headed to the next spot, the Japanese Tea Garden. Although the sign said "Chinese," all the advertisements and websites said "Japanese," so we stuck with "Japanese."

I wish they had food so we could feed them, but nonetheless they stayed close to the walkway so we could see them.

A large pretty waterfall at the corner of the garden. We tried to get to the top, but the dogs were over-heated and the path was open to the sun so we went back.

 After we were done with the gardens, we dropped the dogs back at the hotel and walked across the street to a market HEB to get some ice cream for a snack.

My Mom said that at night, the skyscraper's roof glowed green.

After that, we just relaxed a bit and swam in the pool again. For dinner, we tried Bill Miller's BBQ, which actually had an outlet across the street from the hotel. Onto day three!

This was the last day of activities, because on Thursday we would have to travel back. The first task was to navigate our way, by foot, to the Alamo. It was only 1 mile away, but because we were trying to see the San Antonio River on the way, we got a little lost. However, we figured it out and made it there eventually. Here are some pics from on the way to the Alamo.

Once we got there, I took a few photos, but not inside the church itself, because they requested no electronic usage inside.

There were all sorts of weapons from the time period of the Alamo, including a shield from a group of Indians that had made it so it could reflect arrows and bullets! When we finished our walk-through of the mission, we went to a park-center nearby to eat a quick lunch, and then headed to the visitor center to look around. Throughout the city there were banners and signs announcing the tri-centennial celebration in San Antonio. Also in celebration of this, we found a cake in the visitor center on display.(No touching!)

After that, we walked down the road just a short ways to head into the Ripley's Believe It or Not: Odditorium. In case you don't know what that is, Ripley was a traveler who visited all over the world collecting weird, crazy, and unbelievable artifacts to put in a display for the world to see.Whether you believed it or not, everything in the museum was real! I was so concentrated on looking at the displays myself, I forgot to take photos for a while! However, I did get some of my favorite exhibits.

Creepy!

A room designed so that when you looked at the TV, you were either huge or tiny!

That marks the end of my photos! Once we were done with these activities, we simply relaxed at the hotel. Braden had to go back to his house a little early so he could work, but we stayed one more night. The next day, we packed up and headed home.

I really enjoyed our trip to San Antonio, and was reluctant to return to work the next day, but I don't think I'll soon forget everything we did there. I hope you liked the photos, and if you have any comments or questions, feel free to leave them below in the comment section, or on Facebook!