Girls' Day Out -- Tues., Sep. 4

Two Susan A.'s set loose on San Antonio's Riverwalk on this 100 F. day in September. What to do? What to do? (The other Susan's blog is What's Up with Susan and Company?)

First, park in the shade. We opted for the Riverwalk Mall parking at $4.00 for the first hour and $1 per 20 minutes after that...maximum $18.00. Deep breath. It'll be all right. The car will stay cooler in the shade.

Second, find food! Neither of us had breakfast, so we decided to walk along the Riverwalk and look at the menus at the various and diverse restaurants (though a majority of them were Mexican or Tex-Mex). So many restaurants, so little time. Hmmmm...we decided on Dick's (advertised as the male equivalent of Hooters). [An aside: When Bob and I had walked past on a weekend, Dick's looked like the hoppin' place to be. Customers had on chef's hats with weird sayings written on them like, "I dance on the tables," and other various and sundry fluff.]

 Today, our waiter, John, was flirty and fun, not to mention lived in an RV on the south side of San Antonio. Drat, I didn't get his picture. Oh, wait, Susan did. When she posts, she said I could snag the photo. I did get a photo of Susan taking a photo of me taking a photo of her!

Anyway maybe because it was a weekday and the restaurant was slow, there were no chef's hats and no tawdry insults thrown around. We did have a good lunch: crab cakes, rice and steamed vegetables. (Shared lunch so we would have room for ice cream later on.)

Third, take the river taxi. We bought the full day pass that takes you everywhere the water taxi goes. You can get on and off as much as you like.

Here it is the middle of the day, 100+ degrees and we're sitting in an open boat, sun beating down. Thank goodness, the water taxi provided umbrellas. Both of us snagged an umbrella which kept us from becoming lobsters. Sweat was running down my spine, the seats were plastic so a towel to put under us would have been good. It was humid as well as hot. 

Lots of bridges of all types.

Crape myrtle trees in bloom.

The other Susan A. on water taxi with her umbrella.

One of the unusual things we got to do on the water taxi was go through the lock on the river, all 9' in height of it. It took maybe 3-5 minutes to go from one level to the next.

We took the water taxi out to the old Pearl Brewery (end of the line for the water taxi). I wanted Susan to see the art work along the way. Bridges over the river have decorations on the bridge and under the bridge (see the fish under the I-35 freeway bridge below), plus "The Grotto" is a man-made work of art that looks like rock, but isn't, with two waterfalls. See also Riverwalk North Volkswalk.

These light up at night.

Silhouettes.

 The Grotto:

Our water taxi driver/guide kept making a big deal that the San Antonio Art Museum was free on Tuesdays from 3:00 - 9:00 p.m. As it was 2:00 p.m., we got off at the Art Museum stop and thought we'd wait an hour in Cafe des Artistes sipping lemonade or iced tea, then tour the museum. When we got to the ticket window, we were told that the art museum free hours were 4:00 - 9:00 p.m. and it would be $8.00 if we wanted to go in at 2:00 p.m. Two hours sounded like too long to wait for the free entry to the museum. Well darn. We didn't want to wait around two hours or pay $8.00. Soooo, we headed into Cafe des Artistes to regroup and cool off. By this time, we had been in the sun in the boat, baking and steaming for over an hour.

We walked into Cafe des Artistes and were smacked with blessed air conditioning. Ahhh. Tellement mieux (French for "so much better"). Both of us had started to feel the effects of the hot sun. We ordered lemonade, sat for about 20 minutes, then headed back down to the water taxi stop. 

Views from water taxi stop:

 The water taxi stop was a bench in the shade! About 10-15 minutes later a water taxi picked us up to take us back to the heart of downtown (and creme glacee shops!). 

Another 45 minutes later, we got off the water taxi and into an ice cream shop. Cool vanilla beans! I had a two-scoop cone and Susan had one scoop. That ice cream really hit the spot. 

Next, we hopped back on the water taxi and ended up at Riverside Mall. We mall walked three levels and popped into a couple of shops, sampled cookies, looked at movies and movie times, then headed back to the car. We were happy it was in the shade! And yes, we paid the full $18.00 to park. C'est la vie. (I guess I got en mode Francais at Cafe des Artistes. LOL.)

After a 10-minute drive back to Travelers World RV Park, Susan picked up Angel from Debbie the dog-sitter and I dropped her off back at her 5er.

Bob was home, so we had dinner. Susan invited us to the pool so, for the first time since we've stayed at Travelers World, we actually went in the pool. Susan and Bob sat in the hot tub for a bit, but no way, no how was I getting in the hot tub. It was still 90-some degrees out, which I believe was the temperature of the pool. I was able to get right in the pool, no hesitation. It was very nice hanging out chatting and relaxing.

After an hour, we said our good-byes to Susan who will be driving up to Camping World early in the morning.

Nice day, but hot.

P.S. I LOVE my new Canon camera. It has 20x zoom lens and I can even do stereo movies on it. Wow. (No more spots in my pictures either!)

Travel Bug out.