San Antonio getaway

The Wife and I ran away to San Antonio this weekend courtesy of my company. We won a gift certificate for Beauregard House at last year’s holiday party.

Beauregard House is located in the historic King William district just south of downtown. Neither The Wife nor I had ever been to that part of SA, so we weren’t sure what to expect. It’s a very old part of town that has experienced a revitalization over the last 10 years or so. The San Antonio Conservation Society gives a decent background. The accommodations were wonderful. Al Fittipaldi, who runs the place, is a CIA trained chef whose breakfasts are amazing. His attention to other details includes providing every guest with a trolley pass for easy access to downtown and the riverwalk. There are also quite a few restaurants, bars, and galleries within walking distance of the house.

After getting situated in the Whitman room, we hopped in the car and headed for our San Antonio favorite, Liberty Bar. It was excellent as always. Attempting to take full advantage of our free time, we caught a late showing of Lost in Translation. It was sublime. I won’t say any more than to urge everyone to see it.

On Saturday morning, we took advantage of the trolley passes and rode the blue line north to downtown San Antonio. There wasn’t much going on, so we bought tickets to Ghosts of the Abyss at the Rivercenter IMAX and wandered around for a while. We stumbled on Schilo’s delicatessen on Commerce in search of something to quench our thirst. They make their own root beer (a bit on the sweet vanilla side without the bite that you find in IBC, but still refreshing) and serve it in a frosty mug. They’re apparently famous for their split pea soup, which looked good, but we passed on being full from our Beauregard breakfast. The prices were unbelieveable. The root beer was $1.00 with a free refill and a cup of split pea soup with rye bread and butter was a mere $1.30! Ghosts of the Abyss was very good. For those unfamiliar, it chronicles the James Cameron funded expedition to film the interior of the Titanic in 2001. They took full advantage of the 3D, layering multiple camera views behind each other. They also superimposed digital reproductions of the intact ship with the footage shot from the bots. If you get a chance to check it out, do so. By the time we got out of the movie and caught a trolley back down to the King William district, we were pretty hungry. We decided to try out Mad Hatters Tea House. We opted for “High Tea” which consists of a three-cup pot of tea, a few different types of sandwiches, a scone, and some petit fours. The food was delicious and so was the tea. I’m not sure, but I think I may have stuck out my pinky at one point. I definitely felt my inner Brit coming out. The atmosphere was very relaxing and they’ve added cool touches like allowing you to select your own vintage teacup and saucer from their collection. We talked with the owner, Rene, who used to work at Fonda San Miguel among other places in Austin. He was very personable and mentioned that he’d like to expand into Austin or Houston someday. Inexplicably, a bunch of tea made us sleepy, so we stumbled back to Beauregard House for a nap before heading out for a night on the town.

Well-rested, we struck out for El Mirador. I ordered a pork loin dish with chipotle potatoes and a tamarind-ancho chili sauce. It was quite good. Mary, on the other hand, ordered their vegetarian plate, which turned out to be a mistake as it wasn’t quite as advertised. Post dinner, we walked down South Alamo towards Blue Star Brewing to try their beer. We both had the Pale Ale. It was an average brewpub. There wasn’t anything spectacular about it. After a couple of drinks we went farther south in search of La Tuna, recommended by Rene from Mad Hatters. Maybe it was the alcohol we’d already consumed or the late hour, but we loved the place. The parking lot is covered in bottlecaps instead of gravel. It’s an icehouse with a small, walkup bar, a cactus-surrounded patio and several picnic tables under huge pecan trees. They’re at the mercy of the weather, but if the weather’s nice and you want to sit outside to enjoy a few beers, this place can’t be beat.

We ended our weekend of freedom Sunday with a stop at the outlets in San Marcos being good little consumers.

(Note: I’m still testing the limits of the camera in the Nokia 3650, which explains the rather poor quality of the shots of Schilo’s and La Tuna.)