San Antonio Itinerary Day 1

The Riverwalk, the Alamo and palm trees everywhere. Yes you are in San Antonio, Texas!

We are about an hour and a half away from San Antonio, so we decided to take a weekend trip on our January 3 day holiday. We headed to San Antonio and our first stop was for $7 ramen noodles from an authentic restaurant, KungFu Noodles, which is about 15 minutes outside of downtown. Honestly I was a little sketched out by the exterior of the building but the noodles were great and only $7! I hardly made a dint in my bowl.

Beware! The spice level is extreme, I ordered a 3 out of 5 and should have probably done a 2. They had extra red chili pepper and siracha at the table if you low ball the spice level and need more spice.

Afterwards we decided to head to the Riverwalk to go explore! There is tons of parking around the Riverwalk. If you park super close you can cash out $20-$40 for parking. But what we found is if you park a few blocks away, 5 minute walk by foot, you can find parking for $5, a day. We parked near the El Mercado and found this $5 deal. Not bad.

Once we parked, we immediately got on a river boat cruise. It’s $12 a person for a 35 minute river boat tour of Riverwalk. This is a fun way to learn a little bit of history about the city and see what areas of the river walk you want to check out later. There is only one company that runs the river cruises, Go Rio, so you won’t have to find other cruise lines to find the best price. They also run the river taxis outside of the main board walk as well.

Afterwards we walked around the board walk to take our time seeing the sites of the historic board walk. We enjoyed seeing the stage that was in the Miss Congeniality movie (Photo above) and walking past all the restaurants to see where we wanted to eat dinner. Just walking around the river walk was our favorite. It was relaxing and really made you feel like you were in an oasis.

We then walked up to the city level, so weird to think that just above the river walk is the busy downtown, and we were only a few minutes away from the Alamo. We waited in a quick line (thanks to the off season) to walk through the actual Alamo church and then around the grounds. You probably only need an hour, at most, in the Alamo unless you pay for the audio tour. The Alamo is free to the public.

Afterwards we decided to head to an early evening dinner on the board walk and then head back to our hotel to rest. We picked a Mexican restaurant right on the board walk to enjoy the views, called Cafe Ole. The views were prime. The service was awful and the food was ok. I wouldn’t probably recommend this place. Unless you want to get giant margaritas for $15.