Dorothy Piotrowski’s blog

I hate the last day of vacations. Fortunately for us, our flight is not until 4:30pm which gives us a few more hours.

We decided to drive to Gruene. We read that it was quaint town and that wasn’t too far away. We walked around the town and had lunch at The Grist Mill. It was really nice sitting outside and enjoying the sunshine. We also dropped into the Gruene Hall which is Texas’ oldest dance hall. You could feel the history of all the people who have played there like George Strait, Lyle Lovett and Willie Nelson.

We still had an hour so we made one final trip to the Brighton outlet at Prime Outlets - San Marcos before heading to the airport.

In a matter of about 30 minutes, we were able to return the car, get dropped off at the airport, check in, go through security and be sitting at the gate.

The flight home was quick but getting out of the airport was a long process. Let’s just say that we won’t be parking at US Park anymore.

Another great vacation.

We didn’t know that the Final Four was going to be played in San Antonio when we booked our trip.  I really don’t know anything about college basketball.  Anyway, we found out that there was an event called the Final Four Friday - Team Practice. The best part was that it was free.

Once they opened the doors at The Alamodome, We were fortunate to grab a couple of seats about five rows from the court.  We spent the next four hours watching UCLA, Kansas, Memphis and North Carolina.  The Kansas practice ended on a downer when Rodrick Stewart shattered his knee when he fell while attempting a dunk.

After the practice, we headed over to the Rivercenter Mall and made the short walk to The Alamo to get some more pictures.  We walked along the River Walk and decided to have dinner at The County Line with Dennis Miller.  We didn’t actually have dinner with Dennis Miller but he was a few tables away from us.

The River Walk had designated certain restaurants as Final Four fan gathering restaurants.  It was a lot of fun to see all of the fans.  Whenever a bunch would walk by, all of a sudden there was alot of shouting.

We read that there were going to be fireworks but we found out that they were not going to be fired off until midnight.  Too late for us.  We decided to head back to the hotel and start packing our bags.  Sigh.

We were very happy to learn that San Antonio has a Seaworld so we decided to spend the day there.

We first went over to the Dolphin Cove.  They have six dolphins swimming around in a huge pool.  What’s really cool is that  you can buy a tray of fish and actually feed them.  We spent a lot of time with the dolphins and took many pictures.  It was early in the morning and not many people around, so we got to see them up close. and pet some of them.

Next up was Shamu in his show called “Believe”.  When you walk into the stadium, they actually indicate which rows are in the splash zone.  The best part of the show is when the whales soaked the audience.

We picked up a quick snack at Sea Star Market before heading over to catch “Viva!”.  This show uses acrobats along with dolphins and beluga whales.  We also visited the penguins, seals, sea lions and sharks.  All of them were very entertaining.

After a long day of walking (the park is over 250 acres), we left to go and get some dinner.  We decided to check out one of the recommendations that Karen picked up from the gentleman that was sitting behind us on our flight, Tom’s Ribs.  I’m glad that Karen is a good listener because the food was very good. 

We ended our day by doing what else … shopping.  They actually have a Container Store here (for all those organized people) and a nice mall (North Star Mall) which is practically next door to our hotel.  How convenient!

Since we didn’t get to The Alamo on Monday, we decided that we would do that today.  Once we parked the car at the Rivercenter Mall, it was a one minute walk to The Alamo.

We walked around the complex and then made our way into the old Church / Shrine where there were many exhibits.  We were lucky that a tour was about to start.  We went into the Cavalry Courtyard where a very informative tour guide gave us a brief history about The Alamo.  He was a great story-teller, and had us enthralled with the story of the Alamo, during the 13-day siege in 1836.  After our history lesson, we walked around and took many more photographs. 

By this time, it was lunch so we decided to head down to the River Walk and ended up at Casa Rio.  Besides pickles with BBQ, I love all of the free chips and salsa that you get with every Mexican meal.  We had a lovely relaxing lunch on the river.

After lunch we drove through the King William Historical District.  It’s a beautiful neighbourhood of huge old houses, and bed-and-breakfasts.  It reminded us of Savannah, with all the amazing architecture.

Since we didn’t have enough time at the outlets yesterday, we decided to head back and do them properly.  There are two outlet malls in San Marcos … Prime Outlets - San Marcos and Tanger Outlet.  We spent over four hours there and all I have to say is that there were many many bags in the trunk at the end of the day.  And you can’t believe how much money we “saved”.

We realized that there was a Marie Callender’s on our way home so we decided to stop and have dinner there.  This is a chain of restaurants that we have only seen on the west coast, so it was a surprise to find them in Texas.  We were so tired from all of our walking that we ended up taking home a piece of Banana Cream pie which we enjoyed while relaxing on the couch.

Just another day in the great state of Texas!

Today was road trip day.  We wanted to check out what is known as Hill Country, which is north-west of San Antonio.  (Think “City Slickers” … there are many dude ranches in the area).  

Karen was reading through one of the San Antonio books and she stumbled across the Brighter Days Horse Refuge.  Their mission is to take care of horses that would normally be destroyed.  We drove through the gates and parked the car at the visitor’s information trailer.  We noticed that some of the horses were just wandering around.  We went inside and there was a sign on the fridge that said to cut up some carrots and feed the animals.  Karen looked out the window and noticed that a sheep and goat were on the porch waiting for us to come outside.  I took the carrots out and in a few shorts minutes we had a feeding frenzy on our hands.  It was somewhat scary since the horses are quite big.  After Karen was cornered on the front porch, she decided to hide out in the safety of the car.  I took it upon myself to finish feeding the animals.  Once I ran out of food, the goat decided to ram the side of our car.  That was our cue to leave.

We left Pipe Creek and headed for cowboy country.  Bandera Texas is known as the cowboy capital of the world.  We dropped into the visitor center to pick up a map of the area and lunch recommendations.  Found out that on the 4th of July, the longhorns actually parade down Main Street!  We had a quick stroll along Main Street, went to a few interesting shops, and then decided to have lunch at O.S.T. restaurant aka Old Spanish Trail restaurant.  This place was really funky.  You could eat at the lunch counter and sit in saddles.  After a very yummy lunch (including taking the leftover home-made chips & salsa for a snack later), we decided to walk around some more.  A lady at one store told us about BYOS (Bring Your Own Steak) on Wednesday nights.  The townspeople get together, cook up steaks, and enjoy some beverages and music at one of the local restaurant/bars.  (We’ll have to come back for that on a future trip).  We headed back to our car and to our surprise, there was a horse parked in the next spot. .  There, sitting on the bench, sipping a Cherry Coke was an authentic Bandera cowboy.  This cowboy was the real deal, not no Mark’s Work Wearhouse wanna be cowboy.  He told us that he didn’t have a car, since he doesn’t go anywhere, and that Bess (the horse) was his only transportation.  We had to make one more stop in Bandera, at St. Stanislaus Catholic Church.  This church is the 2nd old Polish church in America.

Our next stop was just outside of Hunt, to a 60% scale model of Stonehenge.  It’s known as Stonehenge II and it also includes 2 Easter Island heads.  It was kinda weird to see Stonehenge in the middle of Texas.

We left Hunt and drove approximately an hour to Fredericksburg.  This town was settled by the Germans and has many quaint shops and restaurants.  It reminds me of St. Jacob’s.

Since we were in the area, we had to stop at one of the more famous towns in Texas, Luckenbach.  For those you who don’t know, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings had a hit song called “Luckenbach, Texas”.  The town basically is the general store which is also the bar, post office and dance hall.  We wandered in and found 4 guys sitting around playing their guitars and singing country classics.  It was so cool.

After much research on the Travel Channel and Food Network, we knew that we had to have dinner at The Salt Lick in Driftwood.  Within about 5 minutes of arriving at the restaurant, you could smell the BBQ in the air.  As we were being seated at our picnic table, we could see the big pit cooking all of the meats … pork ribs, brisket and sausage.  All I can say is that this place has the best BBQ I’ve ever had.  What’s even better about BBQ in Texas, is that they love dill pickles with their BBQ.

We filled our stomachs, waddled back to the car and made our way to the final stop of the day, Prime Outlets in San Marcos.  We didn’t have alot of time but we were able to check out the Bath & Body Works outlet and a Brighton outlet.  We need to come back here for more shopping.