we heart san antonio

I know, I know, I missed Foodie Friday last week. My sincerest apologies to you all! I had a good excuse though - I didn't do one itty bitty teeny weeny bit of cooking last week (besides the BBQ we had on Sunday night for the end of rotation). Why? "That's lazy," I'm hearing you say.. because we were on holidays!

It's no secret that we love a good road trip, but, we discovered one thing that was better than a road trip on our last adventure.. and that's a road trip with an extra person in the back to entertain F!

Uncle Mat (aka Hegs) arrived last weekend to spend a week with us before heading up to DC and down to Florida. Hegs and woolmerhof met as cadets at RMC (aka army officer school) many moons ago and got into all sorts of mischief together. Fast forward nearly 10 years and nothing much has changed. Hegs is also F's godfather so takes it upon himself to spoil F rotten (yeah.. those dinosaurs Hegs bought over for F have been going to bed with him each night.. really cute until they start singing the Dinosaur Train song at 3am..)

We decided that there was no way we could let Hegs fly all the way over here and spend the week sitting about on post, (and it sounded like a great excuse for a holiday) we had to do something cool. San Antonio has been on our list of places to visit for quite a while. For me, I just desperately wanted to go back to Texas seeing as though I love it so much, and for woolmerhof, it was all about The Alamo. I figured it would be a good idea to do the military history thing with two Army dudes, then if I got bored, I could go shop. I was actually surprised about how much I loved the Alamo, but more on that later.

We set off on Tuesday morning after a few days spent here going bowling for M's birthday and a rum fueled BBQ with Ben's work mates on Sunday night. The journey to San Antonio was 382 miles from here, and should have taken us 6 hours and 44 minutes. We didn't do too badly, we left at 10am and arrived at 6pm and that was with a couple of stops. I'm not going to lie, Interstate driving is not one of my most favourite things to do - I much prefer the back roads that take you through random towns. The Nearly 5 hour stretch from Beaumont to San Antonio was sooooo boring!

We've decided that San Antonio is our favourite place to visit so far. It's even topped New Orleans! (But I must say my heart is still in San Francisco) SA, (as the locals call it, not to be confused with South Australia) is pretty much made of awesome. Little did I know, it's actually Texas' second largest city behind Houston and it's packed with kid friendly stuff to do. The weather was hot - 37 degrees (c) each day, but the lack of humidity was a welcome change from the Louisiana summer. We stayed at the Embassy Suites on the Riverwalk which, like its name suggests, is a little river running through downtown SA with loads of shops and restraunts lining the banks. GREAT mexican too for obvious reasons!

SA is also home to one of America's 3 Seaworld parks. Being military, we were extremely lucky to get free passes for the day - a saving of $180 between woolmerhof, F and I! We had to laugh when they printed out our tickets and woolmerhof's said Hero: and his name. Mine just said dependant and my name. We also had to line up in the "hero" line, and of course, we didn't let woolmerhof live that one down. Then of course, during the Shamu show, all active US and foreign military had to stand up to be thanked by the crowd. Hegs made a valid point - after 10 years in the Australian Army, he had to travel to the US to be thanked! Ha! Anyway, we all had a laugh.

Seaworld was FANTASTIC! We got there early and made it to four of the shows, which F just loved. My personal favorite was the killer whale show at "Shamu Stadium" and watching everyone sitting in the splash zone (which was quite large I might add) get saturated. A part of me kept thinking back to that poor trainer in Orlando that was killed not long ago, but they seem to have added quite a few safety precautions. The whales were just huge and so beautiful to watch. F loved the dolphin show, complete with dudes jumping in from high dive platforms and trapezes. He really wasn't that fussed with the Elmo show (although the Sesame Street bay of play water park was a winner) but the "aminools" were big winners. There's also a huge water park called Aquatica that opened back in May. If we had more time, we might have considered going back to do Aquatica the next day as there was plenty to see. If you're near any of the parks in Orlando, San Deigo or San Antonio, go check it out.

Oh yeah - The Alamo - that was one of the main reasons for our visit to SA right!? Like I mentioned above, I was pleasantly surprised. I am not a big military history buff at the best of times (unlike woolmerhof) and I must admit, my knowledge of US history and civil war stuff is pretty limited. But, The Alamo was fantastic. It's hard to not be a little excited when you're standing in the place where one of the most pivitol events in the Mexican Revolution took place. While the defenders of The Alamo didn't win the 13 day seige that took place against the Mexicans way back in 1836, (in fact, they all died - Davy Crockett and James Bowie being two notable defenders of The Alamo) the events that happened inspired many Texians to join the Texian Army. Fueled by a desire for revenge, they defeated the Mexican Army at the battle of San Jacinto a little over a month later, which ended the revolution and thus was born the Republic of Texas, until they became the 28th state of the United States of America in 1845. So, a very important place, and battle - things might have turned out a little differently if Texas was still Mexican Texas!

I rushed out to get a good shot of The Alamo as the sun went down one night. The Alamo remains completely in the light of the setting sun - quite a magical site as the rest of the plaza is surrounded in shaddows. Of course, I was never able to get a shot with just The Alamo minus the tourists, but I think it turned out pretty well.

So, two big thumbs up for San Antonio! We trudged back to our little part of Louisiana, wondering why the Army didn't choose to post us somewhere awesome (with wholefoods.. and shopping) like San Antonio (yes, there's quite a large Army base there.. right near downtown I might add!) but, that's just not how the Army works right!? Besides, we decided that if we were posted anywhere cooler, we'd be forever spending money on eating out and shopping. At least here we can spend money on nothing when we're home, and be able to afford awesome vacations. Oh, and of course there's all our great friends here too - US and foreign!

Where to next? Well, Gran and Gramps arrive in 13 sleeps for 5 weeks and the brochures keep appearing in our letterbox! So far we're researching Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arkansas and wherever else Gramps decides to order brochures from - Austin has also been tossed about, so who knows SA, we may see you again very soon!