Our San Antonio Activities

 

Welcome to part 2 of What We Did in Texas!  And by "Texas" I mean about 1 square mile of one city in our second largest state.  I had been to Texas before, with my family when we drove through on our way to the Grand Canyon, in 1996.  Matt keeps telling me that doesn't count HOWEVER we saw more different parts of Texas on that trip (even camping overnight!) than we did of San Antonio on this trip.  I hold firm that it counts.  

We had 3 full days in San Antonio, one with Matt and two where he had his conference at least part of the day.  It worked out that we did one main activity each day and then also ate breakfast at the hotel continental breakfast, leftover lunch in our room (mostly), and walked the River Walk.  I covered where we stayed and most of where we ate in my post on Tuesday: Four Fall Days in San Antonio. Today is all about the activities!

LegoLand Discovery Center
This was what Matt picked to do on his day off, our first day in San Antonio, and it took a little convincing to get me on board but ended up being a perfect activity with our boys (4 and 9 at the time).  We are BIG Lego fans here and have never been to the full Lego Land anywhere.  This was inside a mall, the mall right on the River Walk, and walking distance from the hotel.  We ended up spending almost 5 hours here which is about 3 more than I expected to spend.  They had  Lego San Antonio set-up, which was nice because we had seen very little of the city thus far.

 

 

We were there about a week before Halloween and my Halloween loving husband and kids appreciated all of that.  In the second picture above you can see a church.  That is the church we attended a few hours after our time at Lego.  We were sitting at Lego while the kids were playing on the indoor playplace and I was trying to figure out where the church was.  My phone was saying 800 feet away or something and I kept thinking "there is no way that is possible" but then we found the church and it is surrounded on 3 sides by the mall we were just in.  There were no windows at Lego so I'm not exactly sure where in there we were except only 800 feet from the church.

We admired the Lego town and then spent most of our day in the one main room.  There was a "shoot the ghosts" ride like our favorite former Scooby Doo ride at Kings Island only the Lego version was much shorter and, obviously, Lego themed.  There was another indoor ride we did a few times.  A movie with special effects (I did NOT appreciate the water sprinkles), areas to build, and a whole play place where Sam especially spent a lot of time.

One highlight was taking a class from a master builder and we all made these little ghosts.  Which we didn't get to keep but they are still pretty adorable.  We probably have pieces we could make something very similar. 

 

We ate lunch at the cafe and I LOVED all the little details all over the place, Legos only bigger.  Even the bathrooms had themed doors.   This place was PERFECT for our boys' ages and our family's general Lego interest.  All the things made from Legos or made to look like giant Legos made it a lot of fun.  It was a worthwhile afternoon. 

The Alamo
The following day our adventure was The Alamo, which we had accidently stumbled upon the night before.  When I was researching going to San Antonio, I knew we should see the Alamo and I was SHOCKED when I learned that it is right in the middle of town.  Like, a block or two from the River Walk.  I thought FOR SURE it was in the middle of nowhere.  There are no big buildings right behind it and every picture I had ever seen made it look like the middle of nowhere.  Nope.  I knew that when we went and then we accidentally came across it our first night, heading back to our hotel.  It was just crazy!

This one was free but we did have to book free passes online to go in the church.  Less than a week before we were here we had taken a behind the scenes tour of our own church at home and I think that made it extra neat for us to see things pointed out in this chapel like where the original confessionals were and the baptistry.  We spent maybe an hour here and around the grounds.  We finally learned why we should "Remember the Alamo" which I honestly didn't know before we went.  (Maybe I learned it at some point but it didn't stick.)  

I would have liked to read more of the plaques and such (I AM my parents' daughter) but my kids did not have the patience for that.  It was an interesting place and definitely worth a visit, especially because it was free.

Go Rio River Walk boat ride
On our final full day, we had spent a good amount of time along the River Walk on the previous days and seen SO MANY of these boat tours go past.  They finally suckered us in after Matt was done with his conference this day.  We had booked our tickets online to save a tiny bit of money and took a mid-afternoon ride so our boat wasn't full.  It did seem as if our family was maybe the only sober people on board?  They sell drinks right next to the boarding and you can carry on whatever.  It wasn't a full party boat vibe but it was a bit strange.  

That aside, we enjoyed our 45ish minute ride and learned a lot about the River Walk and the area around it.  Just hearing about how it all was developed was interesting and we also saw parts we never made it to walk to!  And it got the boys and I to walk a bit further along one side on our last visit to the River Walk.  

It maybe would have been helpful to do our first day, to orient ourselves a bit better but it was also a nice way to end our time in San Antonio. 

Where we ate right after getting off the boat.

We ate at one of those tables on our first evening.

That's what we did in Texas!  A good bit of relaxing, eating some excellent food, a few family activities, and enjoying the River Walk!  Not a place we were planning to visit at the beginning of 2022 but I'm glad we all decided to tag along.  It was fun to explore a new place and have a family adventure.