Remembering the Alamo and the Esquire...again

With a full day in San Antonio we slept in a little then hit the street level part of the city. The Alamo is a must-see, just like the River Walk, for all tourists in San Antonio. Jon is a big history fan so he reminded us why we were supposed to "Remember the Alamo". We toured the buildings and the grounds and the sketchy bathrooms...I've had to visit bathrooms in every place I go since I was a child. 

We wandered around the Alamo Plaza and found the San Antonio Visitor Center where we bought cute Texas Christmas ornaments. The clerk gave us a funny look when we asked him for sushi restaurant recommendations. He asked "Are you sure you don't want Mexican food?". We had our fill of Mexican food Thursday so we were on a mission to find  sushi and a steakhouse for Friday! 

Our waiter at The Esquire had told us about The Menger Hotel near the Alamo that had the oldest bar in all of South Texas so while we were close we had to go see it. The bar was on the side of the hotel and had pictures of Teddy Roosevelt and Babe Ruth who were both frequent visitors of the hotel and bar. The boys explored the bar while the girls ventured to the hall with the museum for the hotel. 

Sushi Zushi was our restaurant of choice for lunch...and apparently everyone else in towns. We lucked out and there were 5 seats at the bar. The sushi was well worth the wait! After lunch we wandered around more of the street level part of town then walked back along the river to La Villita, a small village style area with a theatre that was used for scenes of Miss Congeniality. We had to stop for an ice cream break since Katie insisted it was homemade. It kind of was...it was Blue Bell ice cream...which was originally made in Texas...so it was homemade! 

The Texas sun was brutal mid-afternoon so we went back to our favorite spot of the trip, The Esquire, to escape the heat for a while. It was great knowing we had nothing but time to sit around and talk and laugh for a few days. It's different when you live in the same city and just have a couple hours at a time together, but to actually spend 4 days with friends is special. 

We had a little siesta at the hotel before dinner at Saltgrass Steakhouse. Katie could not have picked a more perfect spot to have out last dinner in San Antonio. We had made reservations when we walked past earlier so we bypassed the long line and had a large table on the 2nd story balcony waiting on us. The sun was setting and the breeze was blowing as we ordered Texas steaks. The food and atmosphere were exceptional. Our table was on the far end of the balcony so it felt like we had the place to ourself. We loved our leisure dinner and even enjoyed the mariachi band since it was across the river playing in someone else's ear. 

Mari set her timer and we did a little bar hopping...30 minutes and 1 drink at each place! Katie had to show us Coyote Ugly but as soon as we walked in the door and the scantily clad "coyote" made obscene comments to the boys we knew we weren't staying long. We lasted less than 30 minutes and can now say "been there...done that...don't wanna go back". We hoped Mad Dogs would be better and the atmosphere wasn't as trashy but the music was ridiculously loud! We found a hidden booth and last a little longer before we felt like our hearing aids might burst. We considered another bar but then Billy made the brilliant suggestion of going back to the hotel and sitting on the patio outside. Perfect! By the end of the night, Katie's Up Band said we had walked over 17,500 steps so it felt great to put on comfy clothes and sit outside in the cooler than daytime Texas night. 

Road Trip to San Antonio

There are few things sweeter than waking up in the same house as your friends and being able to sit around in pajamas sipping coffee and chatting. Billy had to work a half day so Katie, Mari, Jon and I went to a Mexican restaurant...for breakfast! We had omlets, migas, some kinda veggie and egg mix, and ham. It was really good! We began to understand why Texas front yards have rocks instead of grass because by 11am it was already hot and humid!

We loaded up and picked Billy up at his plant around 12:30pm and had a boys car and girls car to caravan to San Antonio. 

We are staying at the Embassy Suites on the Riverwalk. Our suite has plenty of space for all 5 of us and we are across the street from the infamous San Antonio Riverwalk. We walked past a pretty building that Billy told us was part of the Majestic Theatre...I had never heard of the theatre but Jon said they have a lot of stand up comedians there. Down on the Riverwalk the temperature seemed to increase and the humidity was sweltering. 

We had a late lunch at The Esquire - the oldest tavern on the Riverwalk and home of the 100ft long bar. We ordered an appetizer of nachos and received a plate with 5 chips...1 for each of us. The Esquire had fancy cocktails and local beer and yummy sandwiches and burgers. 

We walked the entire loop of the Riverwalk and saw all kinds of restaurants and shops. Each bridge along the river was unique! There were a lot of tourists riding the boats and a lot of basketball fans since the Spurs were hosting the Oklahoma Thunder in the NBA playoffs Thursday night. 

 

We freshened up for dinner and went to Casa Rio for dinner. The Mexican food was great! We were stuffed from dinner so we walked to an Irish pub, Durty Nelly's, after dinner and they had a guy singing and playing piano and he had the whole bar singing. We hung out there for a while before getting lost trying to get to Howl at the Moon. We got our exercise trying to find the dueling piano bar, but it was completely worth it! We really enjoyed the band there and all of the members could play every instrument! On our walk back to the hotel we could hear tons of cars honking and people cheering...the Spurs beat the Thunder!

Texas Adventure

Anyone who knows me knows I do not like change. So when my dear friend Katie told me last Fall that she and her sweet husband Billy were moving to Texas for his job I was not too happy. Katie and Billy were some of my first clients when I became a travel agent and they were my first destination wedding group I worked with. My long time friend Mari connected Katie and I because they worked together. Through the wedding planning process we began having girls nights and Mari and Katie and I became fast great friends. So the thought of them moving half way across the country was tough!

To ease the pain, Mari and I began planning our trip to Texas before they ever even left North Carolina! Our first friends vacation in Texas! Mari, Jon, and I met at the airport early Wednesday morning to fly to Austin. We connected in Atlanta and had plenty of time to have a completely unhealthy brunch at Buffalo Wild Wings of bagels, mini corn dogs, and wings. 

When we arrived in Austin we picked up our Toyota Corolla rental car and headed South to Padre Island! Katie had warned us that traffic was a little crazy and she was definitely right! We almost got pushed off the road by an 18 wheeler! People say everything is bigger in Texas and the sky really did seem bigger! Driving to Padre we passed a lot of open farm land the sky felt like a dome around us. 

Katie and Billy meet us in the driveway of their beautiful North Padre Island home. It was a shriek-filled reunion! They showed us around their home and then we loaded up to go to Scuttlebutts for dinner. We spent the night with live music, pool tables, and lots of catching up. 

Good friends are hard to find. Life may try to seperate us, but travel adventures create stronger bonds. 

Highlights of France & Barcelona Reflections

It's been a week since I returned home from France & Barcelona and after recovering from jetlag I have had to tell everyone I've seen about my experience. So many people have opinions and ideas of what a "guided tour" is like. I sure did...and I sell them for a living. I'd bet that my perception of them was like many peoples. Here are 7 ways I was proven wrong and proven right on my opinions.

1. Guided tours are for old people - Wrong - Are you kidding me?! One day on the tour and an 80 year old would be in bed for a couple of days! We had extensive walking tours up and down the hills of cobble street villages. We did a lot of walking where we had to keep up with our guide. We were busy from 8am to roughly 6pm every day. By the time we checked in to our hotel and had dinner I was exhausted! I slept maybe 5-6 hours per night and catnapped on the bus just to keep up with the tour.

2. A guided tour will only have old people on the tour - Wrong - Our tour had a great variety of people! We had a family with 2 kids ages 6 & 11, a honeymoon couple in their late 20s, single travelers, friends, and couples. Our group ranged in age from 6 - 65.

3. You spend all day on the bus - True...Some days - Yes, this was partially true. We had a couple of days where we spent a lot of time on the bus. However, after looking at a map of the territory we covered on our tour it was understandable as to why we had to have a couple of long bus days. We visited a large part of France and some days had to be spent driving. Trafalgar did an excellent job of breaking up the long bus days by stopping every couple of hours at a fancy gas station or a chateau or a cathedral. Patricia spent some of the bus time telling us about the country or the place we were headed to and she also allowed us to have some quiet time (particularly in the morning) to sleep or read.

4. You have to up early every day - True - We had to be up early with our bags outside our door even earlier every day but 2 days. It was tough. I won't lie. It was mind boggling to set my alarm for even earlier on vacation than I typically do for work. However, now knowing how many places we visited during our tour I completely understand why we had to get up so early. If we had not be on the bus by 8am every day we would have missed out on visiting many of the wonderful places we spent time at. We covered a large part of the country and that required some early days. It was worth it, but I was excited to sleep in until 7:15am on our free day in Nice!

5. On a guided tour you are herded around like cattle - Wrong - We did have to travel as a group but when we did have a walking tour of a town we had little Vox boxes that allowed us to walk at our own pace or wander a little behind our group but still hear our guide talk about the places we were seeing. We also had a great amount of free time in each place we visited. We may have had a tour of the town with our guide but then we had free time to explore on our own.

6. Escorted tours are too touristy - Wrong - Yes, we did see the tourist highlights such as the Eiffel Tower in Paris and Las Ramblas in Barcelona. However, we saw a lot of places that I never would have even heard of had a not been on a guided vacation. And I'm in the business! I never would have known about Fragonard Perfumery in Eze, a hillside village near Nice, unless I was searching for that kind of experience. I would have missed the historic walled villages of St. Paul de Vance and Carcassonne. We were able to see a great variety of places that were popular and some hidden treasures.

7. Every tour is fast pace - Wrong - Guided vacations have changed a lot in the last 5 to 10 years. Guided tours used to be 1 night in each city and jam packed with seeing as much as physically possible in a week. Today, tour companies offer a fantastic variety of tour paces. Trafalgar has a Discovery pace that is the stereotypical 1 night in each city and multi-country tour. I did a Regional tour that focuses on 1 or 2 countries and will spend 1 or 2 nights in each city...still fast pace but a bit more focused. Trafalgar's most popular tour style is their At Leisure pace tours. These tours never leave the hotel before 9am and spend 2-3 nights in most cities. This allows guests to have more free time and not feel rushed in each place. After participating in a Regional pace tour I can definitely see why the At Leisure tours are the most popular. There were a lot of places I would have enjoyed spending a little more time in and it sure would have been nice to sleep past 6am each day.

Overall my Trafalgar Tour was an exceptional experience that I would recommend to anyone. Trafalgar has a tour style to fit anyone's interests. I saw so many places I would have missed by traveling on my own. I had a guide who acted like my walking encyclopedia by telling me the history and fun facts about each place we visited and my personal concierge by telling me the must see shops and restaurants during my free time. My cultural experience in France and Spain was well worth getting up a little early in the mornings and sitting on a bus for a few hours while watching the French countryside pass by my eyes.

Goodbye from Barcelona

Day 11 & 12 - Highlights of France & Barcelona

Our last day of the tour brought sunshine and a chance to see as many of the highlights of the city as possible. We woke early again and met our local guide to go see Gaudi's infamous La Sagrada Familia church and do a panoramic city tour of Barcelona. When we arrived at the work in progress church we walked through a garden to get the full effect from a distance. I stood in awe. I have seen plenty of pictures of La Sagrada Familia, but to see it in person was incredible. 

Maybe you won't agree, but the architecture reminds me of a sand-drip castle I made as a child at the beach. However, the detail in the architecture was far more intricate than I ever created. The church is still being worked on and architects are still following the original creators designs. 

We continued touring the city and went to an overlook high above the city to see all of Barcelona and the cruise port. I know, as a travel agent, how many cruises begin and end in Barcelona but I had no idea that the port could hold 16 cruise ships at one time! And it happens! Our guide said occasionally there are 16 in port at the same time. Holy Moly! That's potentionally a minimum of 18,000  tourists in the city just from cruise ships! 

As we made our way to La Placa de Catalonia in the heart of the city we passed another of Gaudi's designs. I don't know the name of it, but it is on my list of places to see again whenever I get a chance to return to Barcelona. The facade of the building looks like bones and beautiful tile work decorates the walls. 

We dropped of some people at La Placa de Catalonia and those of us who signed up for the optional excursion to Montserrat continued on with our local guide out of the city. I woke up from my nap to an unusual looking mountain and our guide describing the history of Montserrat. I'm not catholic so I don't quite understand the significance of the Black Madonna, but the church was simply gorgeous! The views of Spain and the Pyrnees Mountains were also breathtaking! 

We made it back to the city with enough time to stroll some more on Las Ramblas and snack on chocolate churros and champagne sangria. We ended the day with a farewell group dinner at a local restaurant, Citrus.

It was nice to spend one last evening all together with our travel buddies. We were blessed with a great variety of people from all over the world. We bonded with some more than others and the large group naturally divided itself into smaller groups throughout the week. We spent most of our time with the Australian family with young boys, a couple from California, a newlywed couple from the Phillipines, and two shopaholic women from California. We all bonded through our love for travel and exploration.

The ride to the airport was bittersweet. We took pictures and there were hugs all around...even from our Australian little brothers. The couple from California was on our flight from Barcelona to Philadelphia and they sent us Baileys from first class occasionally throughout the flight to sip on while we watched movies. Our luck struck twice as Katie and I ended up with our own seats at the back of the plane. After a week on a motor coach we were extremely grateful to be able to stretch out for the duration of our flight. 

Crossing the Border

Day 10 - Highlights of France & Barcelona

South of the Border? No, that's on the way to Clemson...today we went West of the Border...to Spain! We woke up to sunrise and a double rainbow over old Carcassonne. It was beautiful!!! 

Our first stop once we crossed into Spain was Figueres and the Salvador Dali Art Museum. Now I'm not at all an artsy fartsy person so I wasn't terribly excited about this stop. Europeans sure love their nudity. I have had to get over the shock of seeing art of naked women everywhere! Americans are a bunch of prudes compared to the Europeans! 

Katie and I had about all we could stand of nudity after about 30 minutes in the museum so we wandered the town of Figueres in search of coffee and breakfast...nude statues before coffee is just a little too much. We found a cute little spot for a chocolate croissant and something that was supposedly hot chocolate and I'll tell you, the croissant was better than those in France! 

The lunch spot for the day was La Roca del Valles, Spain's version of Tanger Outlets, so we had time to shop and eat! The outlets were packed since yesterday was May Day many people made a long weekend of it so everyone was out shopping. I found some cute Clark's wedges and we pushed through the crowds to eat lunch at a sandwich shop. I'm so tired of eating bread! The bread is great in France & Spain, but they eat so much of it! 

It was a short drive from La Roca del Valles to the city of Barcelona so we arrived at our hotel by 4pm and caught the bus to Las Ramblas where we met complete chaos. I suppose the extreme crowds were due to the holiday and it was a Friday night, but it was elbow to elbow people the entire length of Las Ramblas. You can definitely compare Las Ramblas to Paris' Champs Élysées and I'll give it to Paris for a more organized road versus shop set up. 

We were pushed the entire length of the Ramblas and only broke through the crowds to visit a few stores. We ventured down some side streets and I know I have travel in my blood when it excites me to see a hotel that I have researched and recommended to clients! 

We found La Boqueria Food Market and I felt like my childhood hero, Travel Channel's Samantha Brown, was exploring the food stands with me. The market had everything from fresh fruits and vegetables to meats and seafood to chocolates and candies. It was packed with people but many of the stands were beginning to close up so I got a fresh fruit smoothie for only 1€! 

As it got later, the crowds thinned out and we found an outdoor cafe on Las Ramblas to have paella and sangria and people watch before catching a cab back to our hotel. Tomorrow is our last day in Barcelona and of our tour. It has been an amazing journey and there are still more highlights to be seen!