A great day in San Antonio ...

This was our last day in San Antonio and we had a great day! We had a 90% forecast of rain for the entire day, so we went downtown to the children's museum to play and explore. We parked the van in a parking garage and walked in the rain over to the museum. Downtown San Antonio is really beautiful with old buildings mixed with new, all adorned with vines and ferns and gorgeous flowers like these!

I think children's museums are wonderful places. I love hands-on activities. There was a ton of fun stuff to do here and we got right at it. Here are Nathan and Rachel experiencing the streetcar together.
Rachel said the last time Nia was here she wasn't walking yet. So now that she is walking and practically running, today was a whole new adventure for her here at the museum.

There was a great "tot" place with soft building blocks, mirrors, and a bunch of nice toys especially for little folk like her ... she was very pleased about all of it!
Nathan was pretty enthused about being here today too. He and I were relaxing on lounge chairs in front of a pretty cool aquarium ...
There is a cool boat where you can pretend to be pirates ... or explore and discover new worlds all of your own!
In the lower level of the museum there is a neat place where you can move your body to music and there is a screen that has musical instruments you pretend to play ... kind of a virtual reality experience ... very fun and extremely weird! Can you see the screen with Nick and Nia there in the middle of the instruments? We had a lot of fun all taking turns here ...

There was an extremely fancy kid-sized HEB grocery store. Nathan went shopping with a small boy-sized cart and filled it up with exactly the kind of stuff HE wanted to eat ...
Nathan, using a digger very efficiently ...
Me, messing around in a box of mirrors ...
This is the bubble/water room. Nick got really into making water routes and dams for the little boats there. Nathan was a good helper to his daddy.
I think we played at the museum for more than two hours. We were all pretty tuckered out by then and needed some lunch. Rachel suggested that we walk towards Hemisfair Park and check it out ... where the Tower of America stands and there is a playground and everything!

We stopped to feed some pigeons ... it was so much fun to watch Nathan throw pieces of cookie to this fair bird ...
Look! San Antonio has a calder all of its own! I like it better than the one in Grand Rapids.
Queenie Nia was given a gigantic chocolate chip cookie by her daddy and made a yucky mess of it in no time flat! Even covered in chocolate, you just can't beat that sweet little smile!
It was a beautiful walk to this park. The rain was just a tiny intermittent drizzle ...
We played for awhile at this great playground. We were practically the only ones there.

This is The Towers of America which stands 750 feet, built during the 1968 World's Fair. We were hoping it was free to go up to the Observation deck, but it wasn't ... except for Nathan and Nia. So Nick and I and Nathan went up to see a great view of the city.
I love heights, as long as it isn't an amusement ride ... so this was not at all frightening for me. Nathan was a bit tentative about going up in the glass elevator, but he calmed down and seemed to enjoy it too.
I took a bunch of pictures from up here, but I don't really know what any of it is! I'm really completely unfamiliar with San Antonio. Somewhere down there is the Alamo, surrounded by tall buildings.

Surrounding the tower are beautiful flower gardens and fountains everywhere! If I lived in San Antonio, I would spend a lot of time here. It was great to see these incredible blossoms in the middle of October ~ I feel so blessed!

We walked for quite awhile downtown, found an area with wonderful shops and art galleries and happily passed the afternoon away ...

This stained-glass window was in a small chapel in old church in the same shopping district ...
There was just one last thing we needed to do while in San Antonio, and that was to visit at least one of Nick's shops! He took us to the shop closest to their apartment. I ordered a reuben sandwhich and a small oreo shake ... delicious!
Too quickly our time in San Antonio has ended. We had a wonderful visit. It was great to see where Nick and Rachel live. We joked with them that since they move every single year, we have no idea where they will be this time next year! They certainly have lived in some beautiful locations.

We will miss this dear family ... next time we see all of them together, Lottie Caroline will be here too! Wow ... that will be a lot of little grandchildren all in a row ...