Last March, my friends and I took a trip to Texas. I wrote a bit about our time in Austin, but have yet to mention the second half. Having never been to the state, my friends and I decided to combine Austin and San Antonio. Austin was fantastic and lived up to everything I had heard about the city. San Antonio was a mix of the highest highs and lowest lows. Thankfully, we only spent a night in the city.
The story starts coming off the high of a whirlwind few days in Austin. As I mentioned above, I LOVED this city so much. We were all a little disappointed to leave, but anticipated our final night in a new city.
The 80-mile trip takes a little over an hour on Interstate 34.
We passed the skyline of Austin as we ventured outside the city limits.
In keeping with true Jonathan road trip fashion, we stopped a few times on the way down. My friends, endlessly obsessed with trying new things, were elated to learn there was a Dutch Bros. Coffee along the route, so that was our first.
The next break was a few miles after at a small lake in San Marcos. The small town sits next to the freeway. Strangely, the parking for the stupid lake was expensive, so we threw on the hazards and ran out of the car to grab a picture.
On the way out, we drove past a sign advertising glass-bottom boat tours. Don’t ask me what you’re supposed to see, but they’re there.
Back on the road, we were pulling into San Antonio about an hour later.
Enter our hotel; Canopy by Hilton San Antonio Riverwalk. Hilton’s relatively new brand is ultra modern and has about 40 properties around the world. They average around $200/night and tend to sit around tourist hotspots/popular parts of town.
Canopy’s San Antonio property is gorgeous. When I first walked into the lobby, my attention was robbed by giant floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Riverwalk:
Almost as if on queue, a river taxi drove by adorned with waving passengers.
The restaurant pictured is the hotel’s Domingo, a South Texas inspired eatery. Otro, the hotel bar, also overlooks the river on an elevated terrace.
Checking in was a breeze and we were whisked up to our room just a few minutes after.
We spent a but taking everything in before rushing to our reservation at the Alamo. To get to the mission, we took our first steps on the Riverwalk.
It was gorgeous before we were hit with an onslaught of commercialization. Suddenly, the quaint path was overflowing with trashy and overpriced restaurants and about a million tourists milling around a gift shop.
It wasn’t long before we took a staircase and finished the route on the street.
Like a lot of historical destinations, the Alamo has free tickets, but you must reserve them in advance.
I’ll cut to the point and say it was incredibly disappointing. You’d think something thrown around in history as much as it is would be a little more… interesting?
The building itself was small and the museum was overcrowded with lackluster information. At the end, we were left with more questions than answers! We couldn’t even trace a narrative for who the site was calling the villain and had a number of historical figures mixed up.
They had a few rangers in uniform stationed around the site but we passed on their lectures when we heard one talking about how former President Trump played a part in the Alamo’s defense.
Maybe there was a point behind the insanely strange remark, but we didn’t really need to know.
To play Devil’s Advocate, the Alamo sits on some gorgeous grounds. The back garden area has some flowers, trees and water features.
We were back on the street in under an hour and decided to head back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.
On the way back we passed by the infamous Menger Hotel. It’s generally known as one of the country’s most haunted hotels and we had to stop for a quick ghost hunt.
I took over a phone booth in the hopes of contacting President Roosevelt’s ghost, but didn’t hear any odd voices on the other end. Legend says his spirit is in the hotel and I wanted to thank him for creating the National Parks. God knows why he would choose a random hotel in San Antonio, but I don’t make the legends
The hotel was pretty when you discount the elusive spirits! Here’s the central courtyard.
And a tile mural.
We were about an hour ahead of schedule because of the Alamo failure. The rest of our group wanted to stay in the hotel, so Shayley and I walked around the city to kill some time.
Our first stop was this church we could see from our window.
We wanted to get a feel of the city outside of the crazy Riverwalk.
I’d be lying if I said I was expecting a ton, but it just didn’t wow me. Maybe it was the fact that we were coming off the incredible high of Austin, but San Antonio was giving me a strange read.
The Riverwalk was nice, but it just felt… off?
The city was gorgeous, but almost felt run down. I think the pushy tourist vibe was a big contributor to this, similar to that of Pigeon Forge.
Even getting off the main stretch of tourism, downtown just seemed dead.
I have nothing against San Antonio, and would even go back, but it just wasn’t my favorite. We ended up at a rooftop bar where we pretended to get drinks in order to grab some pictures.
Meeting our friends back at the Canopy, we hopped into an Uber to head to dinner.
Hindsight has us walking the few miles as this the strangest Uber ride I have ever experienced. After learning we were from out of town, and insulting our decision to visit San Antonio, the driver took us on a “sightseeing tour” of the city. Before anyone calls this a nice gesture, it was freaky as hell!
He kept missing turns in favor of dark and decrepit looking alleys as the navigation was screaming at him.
This would all be okay if he didn’t talk about:
- Chasing people with his car
- Jumping the curb to run them over
- His road rage
- How other people shouldn’t have road rage because “it doesn’t pay off”
- Staging a robbery to claim insurance fraud
- His sex life with his wife
Mind you, this was all in 20 MINUTES!
It was a blessing to step out of that car as we all kissed the ground.
All of that took us to the Pearl District, a shopping and entertainment district just outside of downtown. It was actually really cool.
The entertainment campus revitalized the old Pearl Brewing Company complex.
The giant warehouses were converted into restaurants, apartments, shops, a five star hotel and more. Best of all, it’s connected to the Riverwalk so you can theoretically walk/bike/run there from downtown.
We looked around a bit before choosing a sushi restaurant for dinner followed by a wine bar after.
It had incredible vibes and delicious wine, but our waitress had a strange vendetta against one of my friends. She was lowkey rude and kept brushing off her requests while maintaining niceties toward the rest of us.
Mildly intoxicated, we called a less disturbing Uber back to the hotel where we drank some more.
The previous two nights had seen us going clubbing in Austin, so we opted to skip the clubs in favor of a drunken walk along the Riverwalk.
Much to our joy, San Antonio has an open carry policy with liquor, meaning we were allowed to drink alcohol while winding along the water. I’m like 99% sure this was my favorite part of San Antonio.
We stopped by Fat Tuesdays and got strong slushie drinks for our trek.
After a few crazy nights in Austin, it was a breath of fresh air to take a relaxing walk along the river. I would 110% return for a drunk river walk.
Our nighttime journey took us past the Alamo and Menger Hotel, where we were convinced we saw a ghost…
…and a shop with this armadillo.
It was a really nice evening and we were back at the hotel and asleep before 12:30 a.m.
I was up the next morning and walking a few blocks to a donut shop.
Again San Antonio just had strange Sunday morning vibes.
Nevertheless, Shipley’s Donuts were delicious and I would recommend them to anyone!
When the rest of the group was awake, we checked out and went back to Pearl for a proper breakfast at Full Goods Diner. After the nightmare of an Uber ride from the night before, we just decided to drive ourselves.
Everything about this restaurant was going to be perfect, until we were greeted with an hour wait. We had a bit of time to kill so we put our name on the list and walked around a farmer’s market Pearl was hosting.
I was drawn to The Twig Bookshop bookstore and browsed books for a long time.
We learned our table was ready after a wait of about 35 minutes.
Unfortunately, it took FOREVER to get out of the damn restaurant. We spent almost two hours waiting for our food. I got so bored, I started CHECKING MY GRADES.
Thankfully the manager was understanding of our annoyance and gave us a hefty discount.
As much as I wanted to hate this place for eating up so much of our last day, it was actually really good.
Seeing as it was almost noon, everyone aside from Shayley and I had to drive back up to Austin to catch a flight. The two of us were leaving from San Antonio and I wanted to spend our last few hours biking.
San Antonio Missions National Historical Park stretches about six miles along the San Antonio River and connects the historic sites with a trail. Alongside the trail are bike stations, similar to New York’s CitiBike system. It’s great when everything works, but as we’re about to discover, it sucks when it doesn’t.
In a hurry to get back up to Austin, our friends dropped us off by Mission San Juan and drove away.
At the time, the app showed six bikes in the docking station, so we decided to take a walk around the mission. We figured we could save a few bucks by picking them up after we saw the mission.
It was a cool site, but my brain chose to block out a bit.
While we were doing so, all six bikes were taken which meant we had no way to get out. We were stuck. The two of us hung around in the hope that more bikes would be dropped off, but after ten minutes, they weren’t. We looked at Uber and Lyft, but they were exorbitantly overpriced as we were kind of in the middle of nowhere.
Accepting defeat, we started walking the mile to the next bike station that showed availability, which happened to be at the next mission.
It was hot as hell outside and the bikes were disappearing quickly so I sprinted the last half mile or so to be sure we could get them. I grabbed the last two and we were off down the trail.
It turned out to be a really nice ride, but I could not bring myself to say it was a good time overall after the earlier fiasco.
Yes it was riddled with pretty views and historic missions, but I was drenched in sweat and still fighting an ulcer from the stress of being stranded.
I would definitely recommend the trail, but strongly advise to arrange your own bikes.
After about an hour, we were back in Downtown San Antonio, Right on time, I called an Uber back to the airport.
The trip outside of town was surprisingly cheap and fast, but unsurprisingly our Frontier flight was delayed about an hour.
I was a little annoyed that all of the timing stress we had during biking was for nothing. Shayley and I used the extra time to explore the surprisingly small airport and finish some homework.
This trip was in the midst of the Hailey Bieber and Selena Gomez drama so I found it hilarious that a coffee shop in the San Antonio Airport joined the fun.
I was gifted with a middle seat and snapped this pathetic picture of the city as we flew toward Orlando.
Landing, I grabbed a few of my friends who were visiting Florida from Virginia and went back to my house to host them! Here’s a picture of an alligator from one of our days:
Did I love my time in San Antonio? No.
Did I enjoy myself? Yes.
I would really like to go back and see more of the city before I make any final judgements.
Turquoise Skies 