Planning a trip . . .

So the little girl says to me, “Mommy, I have to see the Alamo.”

And what’s a red-blooded Texas girl supposed to do?

By golly, get her kid to the Alamo!

So I’ve been planning our trip all evening.  We’ll be going Monday – Wednesday of Spring Break.  Leaving early Monday and coming home late Wednesday.  I booked our hotel.  What a scary experience!  Not really, but you never know if the website is reflecting the true ambience of the hotel.  I finally decided that I couldn’t tell diddly squat from the different websites and decided to take my chances with Priceline. 

If you’ve never used Priceline, it’s a little on the scary side for a quasi-control freak like me.  Okay, okay, an honest-to-goodness control freak like me.  You fill in all this info regarding what part of town you want to stay in, what level of establishment you want (4-star, 3-star, 2 1/2-star, etc.), the price you’re willing to pay, and your credit/debit card information.  Here’s the scary part:  Priceline doesn’t give you a list of hotels to choose from that will accept that price.  No.  Whichever hotel accepts your price is it.  Meaning, they charge your card and there’s no getting out of it.  You’re committed!

So I filled everything in except for clicking on that final button of no return . . . and then I clicked.  And closed my eyes.  And waited.  Well, of course there were no 4-star hotels that accepted my $60/night offer.    There weren’t any 3-star hotels that accepted it, either. 

But the 2 1/2-star Holiday Inn said, “Come on down!” when I upped it to $65/night.  So we have a reservation for two nights in a very nice, very well-located Holiday Inn and we saved about $40 over what it would have been booking it through another entity.

I tell you, though, it was SCARY, knowing that we were committed before we even knew which hotel it was for certain!

Now I’m planning our itinerary.  There’s so much to see and do in San Antonio and two days really isn’t enough.  But the longer one stays, the more one spends, so we have to draw the line somewhere.

At first I was going to book us on one of those tour things that takes you around to all the sights, but I discovered that several of the places on the tour package don’t even charge an admission fee.  The tour company was going to charge us $130 for all three of us.  With coupons I found on the net and careful planning, we can see everything we would have seen with them for less than $50.  Gee, I think that may leave us some money for a nice lunch somewhere!!! 

So we’re planning on seeing the following:  The Alamo, Mission Concepcio’n, Mission San Jose’, The Spanish Governor’s Palace, the IMAX film “Alamo – The Price of Freedom,” The San Antonio Zoo and Japanese Tea Gardens, and El Mercado (Market Square).  We also plan to eat at Schilo’s Deli (a German delicatessen) and Mi Tierra Cafe & Panaderia (a Mexican bakery that is open 24 hours).  It sounds like a lot, but God is so good.  The hotel that Priceline threw out to us is literally less than five miles from nine of the ten places listed above.  So I don’t think we’ll have any problems accomplishing our goals!

This is the famous “Rose Window” from the Mission San Jose’.  If you’ve ever seen the movie “Still Breathing” with Brendan Fraser, this is the window he shows JoAnna Going.  I loved this movie and I can’t wait to see the actual window when we’re in San Antonio.

It’s still a couple of weeks before we go, but I love planning trips and having everything all figured out.  I’ve researched all the places we want to see, printed out maps, figured out the order we should see things to best utilize our time . . . AJ prefers to just hop in the car and let the wind take him where it will!  We’re a perfect match, because I figure it all out, keep it to myself, and he’s none the wiser and perfectly content.  He has said many times that the planning is half the fun for me and it’s true.

I will be taking lots of photos and will be posting them here since I figured out I can upload them to my Blogspot page and then copy them over here.  Yes! 

It’s late — goodnight!