Last year I finished my MBA in grad school, and my sister Morgan finished her bachelor’s degree, so to celebrate, our family decided to take a road trip to San Antonio, a city that none of us had been to before. And it was the perfect timing because I had two weeks between when I finished my first job and when I would start my current job. We booked an Airbnb and planned to take the dogs with us, and it was a nice trip to celebrate finally being done with school.

Day 1: The Roadtrip

I was excited to visit Texas again as my only experience from the state was spending a night in Houston a couple years ago. We packed up our SUV and loaded the dogs in and took off for San Antonio. Dixie, our black lab had traveled with us before, but Charlie, our silver lab had never gone anywhere with us before because she was young. She’s kinda crazy, so we expected this to be an interesting trip. But after the first 30 minutes or so, we realized that she’s actually a decent traveler because she falls asleep in the vehicle. We passed through Alabama and Mississippi pretty quickly and then turned north toward Baton Rouge where one of my favorite stretches of road is found.

The interstate cuts through the Atchafalaya Swamp in Louisiana, over a bridge that stretches 18.2 miles, making it the third longest bridge in the United States. The Atchafalaya Swamp is the largest swamp in the US, and you can spot alligators below as you drive along the parallel bridges. I like exploring wetlands, so this is always an exciting drive for me. We then continued on into Texas and of course had to stop at a Buc-ee’s. I always heard that driving through Texas takes forever, and that’s no exaggeration! We finally reached Houston and still had several hours till we would reach San Antonio. Throw in frequent bathroom stops for the dogs, and it was late by the time we finally arrived to San Antonio. And you’d think after all that driving that we would finally be able to rest… well it doesn’t usually work out that way for my family. The code we had been given to open the front door of the Airbnb didn’t work. And to make things even more interesting, the owner of the Airbnb was on a cruise without signal. So we’re all standing here on the side of the road in the middle of the night with all our stuff, unable to get into this house we rented, 10 hours away from home. And the dogs had to bark everytime someone passed within our view, just bringing more attention to us. We tried contacting the owner but didn’t have any luck. We decided to throw everything back into the SUV and walk the dogs along the San Antonio Riverwalk just down the road until we could figure something out. The last thing we wanted was to sit in the vehicle because that’s what we had been doing all day. We went for a walk along a small section of the Riverwalk, but we unfortunately never heard from the Airbnb owner. We contacted Airbnb about the situation as well, but they couldn’t get ahold of her either. We returned to the house and tried the combination again without any luck. Starting to look for hotels, we gave up hope that we would be able to get into the house. Then for some reason Morgan started typing in random combinations thinking she might guess it, and we all thought she was crazy until she put the right one in and the door opened! We found out later that the cleaning crew had changed the combination without telling the owner, but that didn’t matter anymore because we could at least get into the house.

Day 2: Bus Tour

We woke up the next morning and took the dogs for a walk along the Riverwalk. This would become our favorite thing about the city. The dogs loved being able to go out for a walk in the mornings, and what’s cool about the Riverwalk is that it literally passes through the entire city. Almost every important location can be reached via the Riverwalk which follows the natural path of the San Antonio River. The scenery changes as you walk along it, with some areas being more developed than others, but the whole area is nice to walk along and very dog-friendly. We then headed back to the house and left to start our first day of sightseeing. We drove to the Alamo because that’s where you have to start in San Antonio, and it was very hot in the middle of the summer! We waited in line for a while to get into the Alamo. Once we were finally at the door, we were informed that pictures are not allowed inside the building. There were people watching to make sure we didn’t take pictures, so I never tried to sneak one. The inside was interesting. It is like a museum that tells about the Battle of the Alamo and the people involved, but it’s actually really small.

After exiting the back, we walked down to the statue of Davy Crockett and then headed across the street to wait for our hop-on hop-off tour bus to arrive. We had a day pass for the bus, so we could explore the main sites in the city without having to drive everywhere. (I’d recommended this because parking can be difficult throughout the city). We sat on the top level of the bus which was open-aired. The bus made many stops at popular places around the city. The first stop that we got off at was the downtown section of the Riverwalk. This section was much busier than the section we had walked earlier in the day. Shops and restaurants lined the streets, and boat tours cruised down the middle of the river. It was a nice, somewhat calm atmosphere considering how crowded it was. It’s hard to believe that a place like this exists in the fastest growing city in the United States.

We walked along the Riverwalk for a while before heading back to the bus to go to our next stop. Our next stop was Market Square (El Mercado), the largest Mexican market outside Mexico. It was very colorful with mariachi bands playing in the background. Stands were set up selling authentic Mexican food everywhere we looked. Here, I was able to try mango con chile, a mango with chili flakes on it. It was very good! I don’t like making something unnecessarily spicy, but the chili flakes actually added a lot to it, so I was impressed.

We then walked inside this large souvenir market which somewhat reminded me of similar markets I visited in Honduras and Nicaragua. After walking around for a while, we tried some gorditas before heading back to the bus. While we had only made two stops, we had done a lot of walking and saw a lot of the city. The bus dropped us back off at the Alamo where we had parked earlier that day. There was one last place we wanted to visit, but the bus never stopped close to it. That was the San Antonio Missions. So we asked around and found that there was a different bus that went there, but the missions closed at 5:00, and we realized we wouldn’t have time to take the bus to all four. So we decided to drive ourselves. It was a little farther than we expected, but we finally reached the first one, Mission Concepción.

The San Antonio Missions are old Catholic churches that the Spanish used to help house and educate the Native Americans in the area. The main reason I wanted to visit the missions is because they are considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a list of locations around the world of historic, natural, or cultural importance. Mission Concepción was dedicated in 1755 and is known as the oldest unrestored stone church in the United States. It’s a beautiful area to walk around, and there are centuries-old paintings on the inside. While these buildings are very old and protected by the National Park Service, they are still used as Catholic churches and have mass regularly.

We then drove to the next one, Mission San José. This mission is 300 years old this year and is considered to be the best preserved of the four missions. There are beautiful arches leading to the entrance of the church, and the entire courtyard has a wall surrounding it with houses built for the Native Americans to use. Inside each of these churches was the very quiet atmosphere that most Catholic churches are known for.

My youngest sister Audrey may not have been too pleased that I dragged her to each of these missions, but I wanted to visit all four since they were listed as a world heritage site. To be fair, it was a lot of walking to get to each, and it was a very hot and humid day. So we then drove to the third one, Mission San Juan. This one was smaller than the previous two. It was white unlike the others, and the inside was very narrow, giving it a claustrophobic feel. After walking around this compound a little bit, we finally headed to the last one and got there just before 5:00. Mission Espada was the last one, and this one was surrounded by beautiful gardens. We weren’t able to go inside this one because there was a wedding taking place on the inside.

After finally finishing all four missions, Audrey was excited to sit down in the A/C, and we headed back to the house to check on the dogs. We took the dogs on another walk along the Riverwalk, and this time of day was a great time to be out as the reflections on the water were very clear. After dinner, we headed downtown to the San Fernando Cathedral for their light show. The light show was choreographed to music and showed the history of San Antonio through brightly colored illustrations. It was definitely cool to see. We then headed back to the house for the night, and the dogs were happy to see us.

Because I’m trying to keep these somewhat short, I’ll share more of this story next week.