Our flight arrived in the evening, so we dropped our bags off and walked down to the River Walk to find somewhere to eat dinner. We picked a Mexican restaurant and I ordered a "Big Red" to drink. It was just a red cream soda, but every time the waiter would come he would make fun of me for ordering it and ask if I liked it. He said he thought it tasted like melted cotton candy.
While we were there we walked around the River Walk a lot. It had lots of shops and restaurants and cool vegetation. There were always a million people walking around, but no railings along the sidewalk to the river. I kept expecting people to fall in occasionally.
The first morning we went to the Alamo, which was right across the street from our hotel. It didn't have as many displays as I expected, but it was cool to see. We watched a short video about the history of the place. Isaac was into mountain men as a kid, so he really enjoyed going there.
We also went for a river boat tour, which was basically a 30 minute boat ride of where we had walked. We went to a movie theater and saw Shazam, did a lot of shopping/window shopping for the kid's Easter presents.
We also took scooters for a few miles to a botanical garden where we walked around. It was really pretty. And the scooters were fun to ride.
One day we ate at a restaurant called the Rainforest Cafe. It reminded me a lot of the Mayan that used to be in Utah. We thought the kids would have loved it. It had robotic animals that would roar and move every once in a while and was decorated like a jungle.
We also went to a magic show that was really cool. Before the show started you could show up early and see some close-up magic. A really old guy was doing card tricks and the pea under the 3 cups as they spin around. He blew Isaac's mind. Then the show had some bigger illusion-type tricks. I grew up watching magic shows, so I enjoyed trying to figure out how they did some of the tricks. But most of them were really tricky. He made a girl levitate. I've seen that one on tv before, but it was cool to see live. There were only about 30 people in the audience, so we were really up close to the stage. He also did a hanging upside-down while trying to get out of a straight-jacket trick. And one where he poured lots of different liquids out of the same orange juice carton. The whole thing was really cool.
We also went to a mirror maze place. I think that would have been a blast to take the kids to. I could tell where the entrances were based on the reflections, but I think it would have been hard for the kids to figure out. There was also a laser beam obstacle course that we could try. Isaac was terrible. It was hilarious. Every time you hit a beam it would remove more beams to make it easier. Every time he went he hit so many that by the end there were hardly any lasers left. He blames it on his baggy shorts, but I think he was just shockingly bad at it. I did sooooo much better than him, even with my big belly getting in the way.
But the main thing we realized on this trip is that we don't know how to relax. We were always walking or going somewhere. Every once in a while we would sit on a bench and people watch. We would try to figure out what they were doing. And we realized that most people would just lounge by a pool or take a nap, but we just don't do things like that. So we had to find lots of "relaxing" activities to keep us busy. But the trip was a lot of fun.
We got home the day before Easter. So on Easter we gave the kids some souvenirs from our trip. We got the girls some Mexican dresses and necklaces. And we got Luke a Davy Crockett coon skin cap and book and Bowie knife. We definitely miss the kids while we are gone, but it's also nice to get away and have some adult conversations without being interrupted every 5 seconds. It is also nice to find places that we think would be fun to go back to with the kids some day.
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