San Antonio

Botanical Gardens

Our first visit today was the San Antonio BotanicalGardens. These gardens specialize in 3 regions of Texas: the plains, the hill country, and the east piney woods. Each of these also had a representative home from the 1800’s in the midst of them. The most interesting parts of the gardens, however, was some of glass conservatory buildings which housed tropical and desert plants. As is usual, we found several species of plants in these gardens that we had never seen before. All in all, a small gardens, but worth the visit. They were in the midst of an expansion project which was under construction while we were there. The staff recommended the Lorraine Bakery for lunch. We had a delicious quiche and salad. The restaurant is one among many housed in the former Pearl Brewery which has been converted to shops and restaurants.

 

Old Man and Barrel Cactus

In the afternoon, we visited the Witte Museum, a science museum with lots of interactive exhibits. We spent most of our time in the Boeing Above & Beyond special exhibit that was touring there: lots of fun activities and explanations about flying from birds to planes to spaceships. In several exhibits you were able to design your own plane and then fly it. For example, Mary had to design a plane to track tigers in the wild – she designed a drone type plane with GPS and infrared detectors to track them. I designed a plane to follow a difficult route through the air, I didn’t do very well, not enough video games in my youth. The regular exhibits told the story of the area: from dinosaurs to the animals to the people. They also had an exhibit on the human body designed for children, but it was fun to test my strength, endurance, and eating habits as an adult.