San Antonio Texas Riverwalk

Numerous day excursion opportunities outside of San Antonio are available when you need a change of view and pace. There's the Hill Country, and a number of small towns to the north, such as New Braunfels/Gruene and Boerne, which were founded during the era of German immigration. (Need to cool off...? Visit the Schlitterbahn water park.) A day trip to Mexico is also possible but we were not enthusiastic about border towns after a visit to Tijuana.

We decided to combine some "heritage" with a more current attraction by spending half a day in historic Gruene and then traveling about 20 miles up the road to San Marcos, which is halfway between San Antonio and Austin, a strategic location which resulted in the development of two huge outlet malls (Tanger and Prime) literally adjacent to each other.

We were glad to get an early start and arrive in Gruene before 10 AM, because by 11 AM the public parking lot was full and so were all the spaces along the two main streets. About 2 hours was all we needed to see the town and then we enjoyed a fine lunch at the Guadelupe Smoked Meat Cafe, located on the river for which it is named. After lunch we crossed the bridge and found a river rafting outfitter, a very packed parking lot and tube after tube of rafters heading downstream. At over 100 very humid degrees, it was a good day to be in the water! (The evening before, it was 108 at 7:30 PM; we were there in summer only because we were using free airline tickets to combine two one week trips.)

Although the outlet malls had over 200 stores, Gruene had more unique shopping and we spent more there than anywhere else on the trip. One store had candles with scents we had never encountered before...and Cinnabons and Beach Blonde smelled liked the real thing! (Music: Deep in the Heart of Texas.)


Gruene Hall Oldest dance hall in Texas	Gruene Hall interior	B & B next to Gruene Hall


General Store	Check that cactus out!	Guadalupe Smoked Meat Cafe outdoor river front dining