This is the view of the river walk that I have from the balcony of my room, I am on the 6th floor of the Marriot. So pretty! This morning I got to cuddle with Thomas all through breakfast, he is such a cute happy little boy and I love it!
Our first stop of the day today was going to see the San Antonio temple. It is such a gorgeous temple with so many amazing stained glass windows. Karin, Ricky and Andrew went and did baptisms for the dead. The rest of us stayed outside and walked around the temple grounds and hung out at the visitors center.
These are the front doors that you walk through to enter the temple, the stained glass is so vivid!
I love this picture, it shows how many stained glass windows decorate the walls of this temple.
The gardens on the grounds were lush and beautiful and full of color
These tree stained glass were my favorite, there were four of them and the entire gold part of the tree shimmered when the light would shine through. It was so hard to capture it in a picture, but it was almost like it had micro glitter embedded in the glass. It was breathtaking.
Ben found this little Book of Mormon in the store of the visitor center and desperately wanted it. Luckily Grammy and Grand pop are awesome and gladly bought it for him. He spent the rest of the time sitting off by himself underlining his new precious book. It was adorable.
After a while the kiddos started to get a little restless. I thought it would be a great time to bust out cookie box number two. This time I wanted to try out the Cowtown cookies. They were pretty cute chocolate cookies in the shape of cows.
I told the boys that before they could eat them I needed them to pose for a picture with their cookies, this is how they posed themselves...
When I asked for a little more organized composition, this is what I got ... They were pretty excited to eat their cookies haha
When Karin, Ricky and Andrew were done, we took one more walk around the grounds so that they could see it all.
After we said goodbye to the temple it was time to get some lunch! Karin had asked for a list of tasty restaurants from her friend that lives in Texas. This Alamo Cafe made this list because of it's awesome home made tortillas, so we decided to go check it out! It is such a fun atmosphere and the service was amazing. I really liked the quesadillas that I got. In addition to unlimited chips and salsa, they also give you unlimited freshly made tortillas that are still warm, oh my goodness they were amazing!
So yummy and so fresh!
Our cute little waitress gave me a refill in a to go cup when we were getting ready to leave because she could tell I really love my diet coke, like I said, excellent service!
After lunch we split up and did whatever activities we wanted to do that afternoon. The Karin and Ricky took the boys to a children's museum and had a blast. Mom, dad and I started with a boat tour that went up and down the river walk. We learned all about the history of the buildings and the surrounding areas. It was so much fun! Very relaxing and so, so interesting!
This building was designed to look like a tall thin wall when viewed from a certain angle. Goal achieved, it totally looks like there is no dimension to it at all, I don't know if this picture really proves that point or not but I still thought it was an interesting design goal.
Here is the view of the Riverside mall from the river entrance.
Our guide was awesome. He was very knowledgeable but also hilarious. He gave us a very entertaining tour.
The Life Tower building had the most gorgeous Gothic stone work, such a classy building. I love the gargoyalesque faces, they have some pretty funny expressions.
The spring blossoms were so beautiful and so vibrant! I wish a few more trees had been in bloom while we were there. But I'm glad the ones that were blooming were blooming!
The tour ended just a couple of blocks away from our hotel so we walked up on the street level. On some of the walls along the street they have these old pictures of what the area looked like back in the day, I thought they were so fun because there are still a lot of the same buildings there. For example, find the Aztec sign in the black and white picture, below I included of a picture of what the sign looks like now, the building still looks exactly the same. You can see the Life Tower Building in the back, I have included lots of pictures of how that building is still the same. Also, notice the building on the left in the foreground, that is the cathedral that is right outside my hotel window and is in the picture below the Aztec sign picture. Isn't that fun!
Here's another one, I just think they are so cute! See the bottom of the Empire sign on the right in the foreground ... above is what that sign looks like today!
After quickly stopping by the hotel we were off, once again, to the opposite end of the river walk to get to the Alamo Plaza in hopes of catching a trolley car tour around the city. We tried a new short cut we learned on our river tour that took us through one of the hotels located right on the bank of the river. On our way we passed by an awesome glass shop. While Chihuly is an extremely talented artist, I think it's cool to spread the word that he is not the only person that works with that medium, and while a lot of glass might look like his work, he shouldn't get all the credit for all awesome glass forms.
Unfortunately we had missed the last trolley tour of the day, so I bought a water color of the Alamo instead of buying a trolley ticket. I like to collect art work of the cool places I go, while I am actually at the place haha. Most of the walls of my future home are already spoken for with all of my treasures I have collected over the years.
After we had an appropriate reaction period about missing the trolley tour, mom decided to go back to the hotel to take a nap, dad decided to go see the Alamo movie again so that left me to roam the city to take pictures of all the pretty buildings and to go shopping for cheesy, typical Texan, souvenirs. I took so many pictures of the River Center mall because I thought it was such a gorgeous building and needed to be documented well.
These windows are replicas of the rose window from the San Jose mission. My next post will be all about the 5 missions of old San Antonio so make sure too look for the pictures of the original so you can see how much these windows look like the real thing.
I loved all the things that made fun of the saying, "Everything is bigger in Texas." I thought they were hilarious, I so wanted to buy this lighter but it was a little ridiculous.
Instead, I bought these cute Texas suckers
After my crazy and wile raid on the town, I met up with dad after his movie got out. He came with me to buy some crocs, they are actually super cute and I have already gotten dozens of compliments on them from people who have no idea they are crocs, they are amazing! Then we met up with Karin who was out for a stroll with some of her boys down by the river.
I really wanted to wear all two of my cowboy-ish clothing items while I was in Texas, today it was my cowboy boots turn to shine. I needed documentation to show how cowboy I was while in Texas, so I took a picture of my boots enjoying the view of the river.
The river walk is gorgeous at dusk when the day light is such an intense shade of blue and the city lights accent it so beautifully with their golden hues.
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