A river walk

I don't have much time to blog, since I'm leaving this afternoon for a short, but rather extensive, geographically, trip. (More about this later.) But I had to write about what we did last Saturday, since it was so quintessentially Hometown Tourist-y. (Although a regrettable lack of good batteries in the camera resulted in very few pictures taken.)

We went to the Alamo and the Riverwalk! My city's two most popular (and, we often hear, the state's most popular) tourist attractions.

The impetus was, of course, visitors from out of town, including one who'd never been to Texas. But the evening started with our first symphony performance in some time. (An unofficial New Year's resolution of mine is to do more supporting of musical performances in town.) The Prokofiev violin concerto and Beethoven's 7th were fabulous! And an extra treat was the chalk art on the sidewalk outside the Majestic, one of the examples of which you can see above. Earlier that day was "Chalk it up," when groups from all over town draw on sidewalk and street. We liked several of the designs we saw that were still in evidence that evening.

Even though the symphony ended at about our usual bedtime, we met up with the out-of-towners, who were just a short walk away on the River enjoying margaritas. After eating what was essentially a second supper of nachos (across the river from the restaurant shown above), we decided that the Texas newbie just had to see the Alamo, which is also not far away (advantage of a small downtown! picture is of visiting nephew and friend).

And not far from there is the Menger Hotel, Teddy Roosevelt hangout and overall interesting historic structure. Amazingly, even though it was almost midnight, a very congenial security guard cum tour guide was showing some other folks around the lobby's highlights and so we joined in. An additional historic note that he hadn't known about: the visiting in-laws had their wedding reception here

many
a few years ago and my sister-in-law had thrown her bouquet from one of these picturesque interior balconies!

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Now, about that trip, and an advance apology for an upcoming blog hiatus. Tomorrow we head to Denver for another Colorado October wedding, another nephew (not the one in the Alamo photo—I've got lots of nephews) tying the knot. Then Henry heads home on Sunday but I fly to Washington for a librarians' meeting. I've got new batteries in the camera, though, and so hope to have some good pictures and good stories to catch up on when I get home.