san antonio | part one

we’ve been wanting to travel down to san antonio for a couple of years now and finally mark off of our texas bucket list, but it was always a trip that we just seemed to easily postpone. It’s a city that’s close enough to drive to, but not really worth it for only a day trip. We had made the decision to finally go this year to celebrate my birthday/our dating anniversary.

january 23

we arrived in town around noon, and since it was a tad early for us to check-in to the hotel, we decided to go ahead and visit the alamo. Everyone told us that the alamo just “isn’t worth visiting”, “it’s just a tiny little building”, and let me just tell you, not true. You do kind of just happen upon it, as it’s smack dab right in the middle of downtown, hidden under a blanket of giant oak trees. As you drive into downtown, you have a “ripley’s believe it or not” museum on one side of the street, and the alamo on the other. Definitely out of place…but you know, the alamo was here first…so…yeah. It seemed like no one else got the memo that the alamo “isn’t worth visiting” because it was very busy! While the main, most iconic building, the church, is a pretty small building, it’s really an amazing experience to walk through it. There truly is so much history in one small space. They have done such an amazing job in the restoration and upkeep, and you can see the carvings of soldier’s names from the Mexican-American War. In history class, I remember briefly touching on the importance of the alamo and how Tennessee sent Volunteers (which is how they came to be known and the Volunteer State), and that was really it. Oh, and Davy Crockett, can’t forget about that coonskin hatted fella.

| the alamo |

| obligatory #snellfie alamo picture |

They have a diorama of the original layout of the grounds of the alamo and you can really see how much downtown san antonio has heavily creeped into the alamo territory. But, there are still plenty of grounds for you to explore, really making me question the people who say that the alamo is just a “tiny little building”. They have an entire separate barrack that occupies artifacts and is now a museum, a beautiful old oak tree sits in a courtyard surrounded by picture boards that give a detailed timeline of the history of the planning and building of the alamo, as well as a yard that has real life replicas of a soldier’s quarters. I will definitely claim to be a history nerd, but I really think it’s an interesting place to visit. Now that we are Texans, we really felt like we had an obligation to learn some more of it’s history.

| beautiful old oak tree that still resides inside the walls of the alamo |

| where one of the original outside walls used to be. currently in front of "ripley's..." |

After spending some time walking around the alamo and some streets of downtown, we decided to head over to the Pearl complex. There are quite a few restaurants in the area and since we still had a little time before check-in, we thought it was the prefect time to eat. When we travel, we really like to eat at places that aren’t where we are, as well as eat cuisine that is native to the area. Lucky for us this meant Tex-Mex. Enter La Gloria’s….this restaurant had the best sangria I have ever had, and homemade tortilla chips…I could literally rave about the combo forever. We wanted to get something other than tacos (since we were pretty sure that we were going to be eating Mexican again on the trip), so we decided to share a Mexican pizza. It was a homemade, thick tortilla crust, topped with pureed black beans, lettuce, hand grated queso cheese, and shredded brisket. Four words, heaven in my mouth. I’ve never loved Mexican food more than in this moment. I think we would almost travel back down to SA JUST to eat here. And another plus, it was right on the riverwalk, so you have a great view with sunshine on your face and a nice breeze coming off the water (we were ridiculously lucky that the weather was so nice in the middle of January…thank you Texas).

| sangria for the win |

| brisket mexican pizza + housemade tortilla chips |

After lunch we were finally able to check in to our hotel. Since Nate handles all of the travel for the FC Dallas Academy teams, he has a ton of hotel rewards that we were able to use to book a night at the gorgeous Hotel Emma. The hotel used to house the old Pearl Brewery and they have done such an amazing job at restoring and renovating the brewery itself, and the grounds that occupied it, and have turned it into this amazing complex.

I’m just going to post pictures here, because my explanations just wouldnt do it a bit of justice.

| exterior view |

| outside courtyard with fireplace |

| reception |

| in love with this tile..... |

| lobby |

| old machinery in the lobby |

| a corner of sternwirth |

| hallway to conference rooms + gift shop |

A new bar has been set for hotel check-ins….a free margarita upon arrival. This, of course, is served with fancy finger foods in an old library, accessible only to hotel guests. The margarita, of course, puts all other margaritas to shame No mix used here, just blanco tequila, orange liqueur, and lime juice over ice. We both loved them so much that we bought all of the ingredients once we got back to Frisco and now use the recipe at home.

After perusing through shelves of books and sipping on our delicious margaritas, we decided to go check out our room. Being on a tight budget, and wanting to maximize our hotel rewards, we opted for the most basic of rooms, so we weren’t expecting a room like what is pictured on their website. But, we were pleasantly surprised! King bed, river view, and, my favorite….a claw-foot tub! They even included a complimentary bottle of champagne since we were celebrating our anniversary.

| view of the hotel from our floor |

| view of a portion of the Pearl complex from our floor |

| wild sam field guide that comes complimentary with the room |

| i pretty much can't get over this tub |

We took a look through their welcome notebook, to attempt to make plans for the evening, and ultimately decided to stay on the grounds. We were still pretty full from our delicious late lunch and were waiting to do anything downtown until the next day. We opted to go to the hotel bar, Sternwirth, and just get some small plates. We both chose to get a house cocktail and I got lamb meatballs and Nate got a cheeseburger……(anyone who knows me, would be so proud that I was being adventurous with my food choices).

| classic snellfie |

| nightlife in the hotel lobby |

| a little corner of sternwirth |

After dinner, it was still pretty early so we decided to go walk off our meal and explore some more of the Pearl complex. We then happened upon an all natural ice cream shop, called lick (appropriate, right?), and thought it was the perfect time for dessert. Nate got two scoops of salted caramel, while I decided to mix it up and got one coffee, one amaretto. Both were equally delicious, how do you choose?

At this point, we were both pretty exhausted from the day and decided to head back to our room to call it a night. When we arrived, we found complimentary macarons in our room from a nearby bakery as part of the hotel's turn down service. first margaritas, now macarons? It's like they are in my head!