san antonio high school football rules (i realize thats not what the phrase actually is)

last night we left austin for san antonio. at the time i was pretty complacent - leaving somewhere in texas for somewhere else in texas. not a big deal, right?

the thing that i realized is that austin really is what they say it is - an oasis of liberal, vegetarian blue state-ism in the middle of cowboy country. a few minutes out of town, and you're back in texas the way you probably think of it.

the thing i have to say is that i actually LIKE texas. in some ways. it's very uniquely texan, which is about all you can say about it - it can't be mistaken for anywhere else. and austin is very texan too, just in a slightly different way (it reminded me of sacramento in some ways, but maybe it's just the capital thing). of course there are things i don't particularly like (guns, large trucks, religious self-righteousness) there, but there's also a charm - and that's what i came to realize on the way to and in san antonio.

on the way there, we stopped in new braunfels - the solvang of texas. it's a little german city that for some reason exists outside the san antonio city limits. i suspect that reason is an affinity between germans and texans for meat. even the potato salad had bacon in it. very strange. we got beef jerky to go, and then took off for dan's grandparents' place. in a slight detour/wrong turn we ended up grabbing sorbet and coffee at a nice italian place in a strip mall (actually in between a christian book store and a tanning salon - how's that for you?). the people thought we were insane, for several reasons. first, we sat outside, in the blistering heat, looking at the gorgeous view of the parking lot. second, we didn't want food, only coffee and dessert (still full from strange texagerman food). most amusingly, dan ordered his doppio espresso con panna IN italian, meaning he said "i'm going to have the doppio espresso con panna." it took the waiter a good 10 seconds to register what dan had ordered and he actually said, "no one's ever said the actual thing before" in an excuse.

after coffee we found our way to dan's grandparents house to say hi before taking off for downtown. they were really nice and his grandpa gave us about a million maps and directions for how to get to downtown. san antonio is a very spread out city, and you'd never need to go to the middle of it for anything in particular unless you want to see the alamo. which we did. it is a building, that's about it, and it's odd to think that a) people chose to fight to the death there and that b) people still care about it a lot. the other strange thing about the alamo is that it's in the middle of a built-up downtown area and shares a parking lot with a mall. we actually went to the mall first. i hadn't been in an indoor mall in ages and this one was not one of the classiest. the food court was swarming, and even i, mall veteran, wanted to get the hell out. but dan needed flipflops so we went to pacsun. the fact that i bought something there proved my shopaholism (let me into a store and i will buy something, no matter what store). the salesgirl was the first girl on the whole trip to ask where we were from and be totally awed. she was very impressed by our californian pedigree.

after the mall hell we went down a level to the riverwalk. essentially this is a walled off promenade around the river, with little shops, stands and restaurants on either side. it's kind of pretty, and a relief to be out of the mall and out in open air, but it is also sort of reminiscent of a theme park. all the restaurants were kind of the same, the whole place was very uniform (wellpaved streets, nice bridges, no stray leaves littering the ground, etc), and there was even a little tourboat going up and down the river, which wasn't particularly wide. it's a nice little area, to be sure, but it was very sanitary, or perhaps i should say sanitized.

we stopped in the heat for the largest margaritas i've ever seen/consumed in my life. i think they were the size of my head, and they were so cold that the water on the outside of the glass didn't just condense, it totally froze. they weren't strong, but they were gigantic and hard to finish. but we finished anyway, with determination (perhaps the same determination that allowed me to climb that stupid hill while camping), and then moved on, saw the alamo and went back towards the outskirts of town to dan's grandparents'.

on the way home we stopped at a real texas tradition - rudy's barbecue. at this restaurant, a bunch of guysm in an open-air grill area, bbq and cut a bunch of different kinds of meats - notably the brisket, which is a big thing in texas. you order it in bulk with some sides (i.e. coleslaw or baked beans) and then they give you a bunch of white bread and some bbq sauce (which is kind of combined with salsa in a weird way) and you do your thang. we got some to go and took it back home. it was gooood, i have to say. what was not good was the soda we bought - "big red," a texas/middle-of-the-country soda that tasted vaguely like watered down cherry cough syrup.

after dinner we watched tv and chatted with dan's g-parents. it was funny to be at someone else's grandparents' house. in a lot of ways, they reminded me of my grandparents (on mom's side). his grandpa set the table for breakfast with little fruit bowls, and he served us carrotcake after dinner, and the weather channel was on about 70% of the time in the house. it was also, as usual, comforting to be in a home instead of a hotel.

at night, we went to see batman begins. i LOVE superhero movies, i really do, and this was no exception. we saw the movie at a theater called the silverado 16, which had "cowboy" and "cowgirl" on the bathroom doors and a bbq grill restaurant inside. they really like their cowboys in san antonio.

this morning we woke up early and had a yummy breakfast of waffles before taking off again. on to new orleans - leaving texas for good and moving into entirely new territory (the louisiana territory, to be precise).