San Antonio, The Alamo City

End of another week again... It's been pretty stressful for me especially because there will be another presentation approaching and it's going to be a technical one, so no bombing or crapping can save my sorry ass lol.

Some of the girls wanted to go shopping at the Memorial City Mall, I too wanted to join, so it was me and Uriel in the car and I got my shopping done from 4:30pm? till 7:30 pm. I purchased a high-waisted brown skirt, short faded denim pants, a gray camisole from XXI, then another set of panties (lol) for the older generation in the family hahahhaha. Of course, those details in a special edition post :p

Finished at 7:30pm, Uriel was already waiting for me hehehhe, I think I extended for a couple more minutes only, then he wanted to go Wal-mart so I went to the next DSW store nearby, bought a pair of sneakers from Converse...

Ahem. Then we were headed back home when we saw this Mexican stall by the street. Got the car parked and got down to have a taste...


Menu on the board has all sorts of stuff. Uriel asked me, what do I want to have, I asked him to recommend me some good ones and he said the Lenguas are good. Turned out Lenguas are cow tongues.... Uriel persuaded me to give it a try, so lol yea, it actually tastes good, just like beef, except the image of a tongue kept popping in my mind.



Lenguas.

Pork fajitas.

Fajitas are basically fillets, I don't know why it wasn't so in this case, and normally Mexicans like it served on tortillas with guacamole (avocado and onion sauce) and hot sauce (jalapeno obviously..)

We also have planned a trip to San Antonio early Saturday morning and the Westheimer carpool members are to meet downstairs at 6:30am o.O

Bloody Shangar didn't want anyone to sleep in the car and he had the radio music on loud. I guess his reasons were good, so that we all can keep Irwin company while he's driving. Loud music or not, I slept anyway for more than an hour.
It took us 2 hours and a half to reach the city which is supposed to be the 2nd largest city in Texas.

There are 2 main attractions in San Antonio, the first is the Alamo.
The Alamo, originally known as Mission San Antonio de Valero, is a former Roman Catholic mission and fortress compound, now a museum, in San Antonio, Texas. The compound, which originally comprised a sanctuary and surrounding buildings, was built by the Spanish Empire in the 18th century for the education of local Native Americans after their conversion to Christianity.
In 1793, the mission was secularized and soon abandoned. Ten years later, it became a fortress housing the Mexican Army group the Second Flying Company of San Carlos de Parras, who likely gave the mission the name "Alamo". Mexican soldiers held the mission until December 1835, when General Martin Perfecto de Cos surrendered it to the Texian Army following the siege of Bexar. A relatively small number of Texian soldiers then occupied the compound.
Texian General Sam Houston believed the Texians did not have the manpower to hold the fort and ordered Colonel James Bowie to destroy it. Bowie chose to disregard those orders and instead worked with Colonel James C. Neill to fortify the mission. On February 23, Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna led a large force of Mexican soldiers into San Antonio de Bexar and promptly initiated a siege.
The siege ended on March 6, when the Mexican army attacked the Alamo; by the end of the Battle of the Alamo, all or almost all of the defenders were killed. When the Mexican army retreated from Texas at the end of the Texas Revolution, they tore down many of the Alamo walls and burned some of the buildings.
Alamo, source: Wikipedia.

The 2nd largest attraction in the city is the Riverwalk.

It was a loooong ride and I was bursting to go to the loo when we finally arrived and found a place to park.

The Torch of Friendship. Go google it if you're interested.

I like this city very much compared to Houston. In Houston you barely get to see anyone walking around the city, it's much like a mechanical city. You do see a lot of buildings (fat squat ones) and cars all over, but nobody ever walks around here.

In SA however, it's very much alive! Well, maybe when we were there it so happens that the city is hosting a fiesta, which only happens on the last Saturday of every month, lucky us. But it is really beautiful, trees all around...

Approaching the famous Riverwalk. Ok, the river is not really that clean as you can obviously see from here. But it doesn't stink, surprisingly and although it may not look clean but there are still plenty of ducks swimming and living there, so it can't be as polluted as our black tarred Sg. Petani.


So famous, have to take picture with it lor.

That day it was kind of cold, I think 12-13Celcius? But as the day progressed, it got warmer and warmer from the sun rays but the wind is still pretty much chilly though.


At a few parts on the street you will notice that the bricks on the pavement are carved with names of people. Initially I thought that these are people who had sacrificed or died with honor for the city. But mana tau, we came across a particularly large brick which says "Have your name on the street, call 1-800-BRICK or whatever.


Description on the Fren Torch.



Most of us, including me were in a desperate need of a caffeine fix. On a sidenote, I find that I am getting dependent on coffee lor. I used to be able to operate perfectly well without the blasted thing, but now I need coffee every morning before work and occasionally on weekends unless I want my reaction time delayed by about 5 seconds.

Ordered hot latte and a blueberry coffee cake heehee. Coffee's like $3 or something and cake is almost $2. Sigh. If I only work here, everything that I used to think were indulgences in Msia is like sap sap here.

We got ourselves a good place to have our breakfast, upstairs of Starbucks, and outdoors. The weather is just nice, with good food and good company :)


Birds begging for food.

After taking a couple of photos here and there, the group split with each having their own preferred destination in mind.

I didn't choose which group to walk with , but I ended with the boy group, Alvin, Shangar and Irwin.

Oh! You can see my new sneakers! Nice riteeeeee.

This is a part of the Alamo.

We got in the old building and just looked around, the battle grounds for you know what, please refer to the top informatic post on the history of Alamo. I only remembered David Crockett.

Later on went into the souvenir shop and got 2 fridge magnets there.

Live oak tree. See how crazy the branch grew till it touches the grounds?


Me and (skinny) Alvin queueing up to get into Alamo. He looks really happy and honored to be queueing with me lor.

The guys were trying very hard to look cool as though they just cant care less whether they are in the picture or not :p

Woot! My sneakers in full view again! hahhahaha...

Ok, I don't know who this guy is, he was just wearing this costume and some tourist were taking photo with him. So I asked Irwin, hey, who's that? He said, I think he's part of the Alamo. So I wanted to be kiasu and get my shot with this mysterious moustachy man in weird costume. So Irwin helped me to photograph myself and the man. Later on, I asked Irwin again, who is that, then he said, he doesn't know! Hahahahhah... trying to cheat me to take photo with that man, that idiot!!

Beautiful skies and streets of San Antonio.


Numerous exciting shops, Ripleys', Wax museum, haunted house of some sort. We didn't manage to try it all out because time did not permit us :(

Fiesta.



What Houston! We're in SA baybeh!

We then took a walk nearby the river, after spending a substantial amount of money on souvenirs, T-shirts... (I got a cute Li'l Cowgirl shirt).



Bumped into the rest of the group at 2pm. Some of the girls are hungry so we all trudged to a Mexican restaurant nearby (it's Mexican everywhere, so when I say nearby, it's abitrarily nearby).


Irwin ordered this alcoholic drink called Sangria. Wine it is not. It's hard liquor mixed with I don't know what.

Chips that ain't chips. They're called totopus, cute name but those are really deep fried from old tortillas.


Me and the boy group weren't that hungry because while we walked around the streets, we tried some of the kebab and barbequed shrimps sold at one of the stalls, so Shangar and I shared a Combo Dinner consists of rice, beans, cheese enchiladas and fried chicken tacos.

I hate enchiladas. I once had a bad experience while working with the crew and I had this frozen dinner of Enchiladas Suiza. Ugh. Didn't like it and never wanted to have it again. But unfortunately, I totally forgotten what an enchiladas is and ordered one anyway. Then I was reminded in a most bitter way...

After we'd finished our lunch, we split again into 2 groups, one that wanted to head for the museum and the other that wanted to go on the boat ride around the Riverwalk. Paid $7 for the tickets and I am glad I decided to go on the boat ride!


Our talk-in-rhymes guide.

It is so beautiful.... Most of the pictures I took were while I was on the boat ride. The trees, the people walking by, the buildings around it.... I'll let the pictures do the talking:


Sorry to interrupt :p Apparently behind this tree was where a gunman took a shot and hit a well-known person of SA. Crap. I wasn't really paying attention to the guide and only absorbed bits and pieces of his story.





The 5 bells that represent the first 5 Taco Bells that opened in SA. Not! Hahahhaha. And crap again, I forgot what they were meant. But I bet if you're interested enough, you could google it up.





Trees filled with nests of birds that hunt for fish in the river at night.


Statue of Portugeuse Saint Anthony whom the city was named after.



This little island is love-shaped.

Groom and bride taking shots at this lovely place.



Phew! That was a few of my favourites from the boat ride.

Moving on, we walked some distance to look for the cathedral. Stumbled upon a church with a wedding service to be held in a while.



The Courthouse,

And finally the San Fernando cathedral!

I would have been most excited... I have never been to a cathedral before and expectations were high that I would get to see beautiful altars, painted glass windows, but it was too bad that there was a service ongoing in the cathedral when we got there!


Okay, now I really got to start on my presentation slides. Kirchhoff Migration (zzz).

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