San Antonio and Austin

San Antonio is a colorful city in Texas near the border of Mexico. I finalized this trip when I got some free time on Friday, March 2nd 2007 as some cubicle arranging work was going on at my office.

This time it was just me and my wife. We started the trip from Dallas at after noon and the 300 miles (480 kms) long drive was the longest I was doing here. We stopped in between only for filling gas and for food. It took more than 5 hours, mostly through the I-35 highway and reached San Antonio by night.

Getting a room in a motel near down town was bit difficult due to the weekend tourist rush and had to return disappointed in our first attempt. But we were lucky in the second.

The city was alive and busy at night with tourists from all the places. We spent time walking around the famous River Walk visiting shops and restaurants. Most of the museums in the city were already closed.

The Alamo was the most known landmark in San Antonio and the remaining facades of its chapel looked stunning in the night. This is the place where some 189 Texan defenders fell in a fight with Mexican Army in the year of 1836.

The next day morning we rushed to Sea World, the world's largest marine life adventure park and family entertainment showplace. The experience there was thoroughly entertaining with interactive shows featuring marine creatures.

First, we saw the ‘Viva’ show that demonstrated whales and dolphins performing with colorfully dressed up acrobats.

Then there was a very funny comic show played by sea lions and humans in a beautifully set surrounding.


‘Believe’ was the Sea World’s flagship show featuring their icon ‘Shamu’, a stunningly beautiful black and white colored huge killer whale.

It was amazing to see how these big creatures were trained so well to perform such wonderful tricks. They even started splashing water on visitors when asked!

There were many other things to enjoy there like the ‘Steel Eel’ ride that makes our heart beat stopping, and the 4D cinema shows that not only gives a three dimensional visual experience but also makes us physically feel what is on screen by splashing water or blowing air or shaking the seats!

Watching penguins and sharks and other marine creatures in their artificially created habitats was never tiring. But we had to rush back as it was getting late.

On our way back, we also paid a quick visit to Austin, the capital city of Texas. We also could enter inside the gigantic Capitol building.

We reached home safely by night after this two day long out-of-city trip that gifted a wonderful experience all together.