Saturday in San Antonio

We drove to San Antonio late Saturday morning, about an hour and a half south of Austin. I’d been there once in high school, and I was surprised how familiar it seemed: I’m pretty sure I even recognized the hotel my family stayed in during our visit over 10 years ago: was it La Mansión del Rio?

Anyway, we parked for just $2 all day (score!) near the Mercado, the Latin Market Square near the Riverwalk, full of various shops and live performances, mostly music with a Latin flare. We walked around, opted not to buy any of the touristy crap, and stopped for lunch at La Margarita for a quesadilla appetizer and a fajita meal, along with mango and prickly pear virgin margaritas. The food and drinks were pretty good (I liked the mango margarita a LOT), and the mariachi band entertained us. The outdoor seating overlooking an outdoor stage in the square where various karaoke-style singers performed and sold their wares. It was kitschy delight.




One of the female performers introduced her last song as being for all the women out there who have been treated bad by their men, and to the men who think it’s OK to treat their women bad or disrespect them, and to the women who don't know they’re too good for a man who won’t take care of them and treat them right, and two or three other variations of the same thing. Then she asked for one male volunteer to come up on stage with her. Silence. Nobody would volunteer. It was beautiful. Hey, after an intro like that, no guy with half a brain would go up there. I think a man with one third of a brain finally volunteered, but I didn't watch the ugly aftermath.

After touring more of the Market Square, we sauntered (well, Ty sauntered, I walked) to the Main Plaza and the San Fernando cathedral, where some heroes of the Alamo are entombed, and saw the huge “alfombra” in front of the cathedral made of sand.




Then on down to the Riverwalk, which was every bit as charming as I remembered it, with the foliage and the ducks and the boats and the arched bridges and the faint sewage smell wafting up from the trash-laden water…OK, the stank was only at one part. It actually is quite charming and beautiful.



We wandered down to the River Center Mall and ended up in a Brookstone store testing massaging chairs to rest our weary muscles. My favorite did everything from the neck to the feet, even the tukus. Tenderrrrr. So after a good 30 or 45 minutes of electronic, pulsating, kneading relaxation and chatting with the sales rep, we decided to see an IMAX film.

“NO ONE MAY ENTER!! THE FILM HAS BEGUN!!” snarled the snaggletoothed creature behind the counter. OK, it was a girl with nice teeth, and she said something more like, “Sorry, there’s no seating after the film has begun.” But I swear she could’ve said it with less of a “you don’t matter and we don’t really like you” tone. The film had begun at 5:25 pm. It was 5:28 when we asked at the ticket counter. Remember this. It will be relevant later.

We moseyed (as one does in Texas) back down to the Riverwalk for dinner at the restaurant the Brookstone rep had recommended to us: Boudro’s Bistro. However, since the wait time was two hours, and we weren’t really hungry yet, we opted to make a 10:30 reservation and head back to the mall’s IMAX theater, which we had originally planned to visit after dinner. But the show we’d wanted to see wasn’t starting for a while yet, so we wandered a little further down the Riverwalk and ascended the stairs at the amphitheater into La Villita, which is essentially “Little Mexico” or old San Antonio. The old southwestern buildings house shops, restaurants and, in this case, a wedding party with Latin music, dancing, and quite a feast. It was fun just being there to take in the ambiance. We also walked up to the Tower of the Americas to the beautiful and calming cascading and trickling waterfalls and surrounding foliage of deep greens and accenting reds lit up by evening lights, all part of the charm of Hemisfair Park.



I should’ve taken a picture of the big, gnarly tree which served as a sort of canopy for a sitting area. Actually, I should have taken a lot more photos this weekend, but I just wasn't feeling inspired, so I came away with relatively few. On our way back to the mall from there, we caught a nighttime view of the Alamo along the way. “Oh look, you can see the Alamo from here, right around the corner on this block. It’s so small.” “Oh yeah, there it is.” History schmistory. We’d both seen the IMAX film in years past. That was enough.

On our way back to the IMAX theater in the mall, we decided we should probably eat something. Oh look, a Haagen Dazs store. However, a single scoop cost about as much as a car, and I was not in the mood for ultra-fattening ice cream. So we finally settled on frozen yogurt at the mall, a serve-your-own with various flavors and toppings. I opted for vanilla and mango yogurt with strawberries and kiwi. They tried to sell us on these little gummy rice cube things the Taiwanese owners put in the selection. I wasn’t sold, but they were fun.



Back at the IMAX theater, Ty wanted to see the dinosaur film, and I wanted to see the ocean one. Why choose when you can do both? We watched Dinosaurs: Giants of the Patagonia (have you heard of argentinosaurs and gig…whatevers?) followed immediately by Deep Sea 3D (ever watched a mantis shrimp fight an octopus in 3D on a huge screen? Sweeeeet.). The first show was set to begin at 8:25 pm. Guess when the last people walked into the theater? Yup, 8:30. Apparently, seating is allowed after the film is supposed to begin if you’re not us. We would’ve made a stink, but we were so tired, we shrugged and whined to ourselves instead, and the magic of huge 3Dness swept our cares away in no time. After our IMAX double feature experience, it was time for dinner on the Riverwalk.




Boudro’s was a great recommendation. The guy at the Brookstone store had seemed like a bit of a food snob, though non-pretentious, somewhat like yours truly (hey, I am NOT pretentious, stop snickering), so of course I trusted his recommendation more than that of the average Joe. But he told us the plate price was maybe $15-18, and it turned out to be more like $25, but we made it work. We split a homemade guacamole appetizer (which they whip up at your table from fresh ingredients, including orange, which I’ll try in the future) and rosemary chicken over avocado risotto. SO good and SO tender. Like buttah.

And with that, we headed back to Austin with full, happy stomachs.



P.S., from Boudro's web site:

Boudro's Famous Guacamole

Ingredients
Juice of 1/4 of an orange
Juice of 1/2 a lime
1 avocado seeded and scooped out of skin
2 Tbs roasted and charred Roma tomatoes diced
1 ea Serrano pepper roasted seeded and diced
1 Tbs medium dice red onions
1 tsp chopped cilantro
coarse ground salt to taste (sea salt is better)

Directions
Squeeze juices into bowl. Add avocado and coarsely chop. Add onions, roasted tomato, serrano and cilantro fold into avocado mixture. Add salt (more is better). Result should be crudely chopped not mashed. That’s it. Enjoy!


Note from Jay: I, personally, prefer guacamole without salsa, so when I get around to making it, I may leave out the tomatoes and minimize the peppers, but I think I'll leave everything else in.