Remember the Alamo!

Tuesday we traveled through three states, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas yesterday on our major trek from New Orleans to San Antonio.  It “only” took about 10 hours.  The kids were glad to add a few more states to the list – I think that we are up to 33. Wednesday we spent the day in the beautiful city of San Antonio, TX.  We went to the Riverwalk and ate at Rita’s Cantina along the water.  The Riverwalk is a really cool developed commercial area in the center of the city that sits below the street level with tons of restaurants and shops and hotels that open to walkways along a little meandering river.  It is lush and green and really beautiful but it seemed a little deserted.  Granted it is off-season but it seems that the recession may be affecting this city more than some we have seen other places.  Of course the Harley-riding spanish speaking Santa had plenty of time to stop and hand out candy to the kids.

Next stop was The Alamo, originally a Spanish mission, later converted to a fort, and most notably the site of the most famous Texan battle for independence from Mexico.  I lived for a summer in Brackettville TX (3 hours southwest) during college while my dad was filming hereh, so of course our next stop was his IMAX film, Alamo:The Price of Freedom (which after 22 years still has 11 showings a day at RiverCenter Mall- way to go Dad).  The kids loved the film (and were dutifully impressed by my “production assistant” film credit).  Later the kids talked us into both the wax museum and even worse, the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum – very disturbing. 

On the bright side, Greg thought that it would be good to celebrate my birthday early (since we’d be on the road tomorrow), so in addition to rallying the kids into being super nice and helpful to me all day (well even more than they already are of course), he took me to Ruth’s Chris –yum, and to a movie.  It was a great day.