Day 25: 30 March - Road to San Antonio

Today, I left Austin. Austin had been incredible and was certainly one of my absolute favourite cities. It was sad to leave, but I will definitely be back again.

I drove to San Antonio with Susanna, a very funny and boisterous Italian woman that I had met at my last hostel. She had rented a car and was going to San Antonio, so we thought it would fun to go together. While the drive was very fun and she's very entertaining, she is a terribly slow driver!! What should have been a 1.5 hour drive took us close to 4 hours! Rather than take the boring highway, we went through the country towns and saw a bit more of Texas.

Unfortunately, San Antonio doesn't have any hostels, and only expensive motels/hotels. This was the first time I tried Couchsurfing. Through couchsurfing.org I had managed to organise a night on a strangers couch. This was a strange experience, but a very good one (don't worry, the site is regulated and people get to rate and review!). When we got into San Antonio, I said farewell to Susanna and bussed about an hour away to my host's house. It was a little too far away from anything, but it was free, so I couldn't complain!

After settling in and meeting my hosts, a very nice brother and sister with a spare bed (no couches for me!), I headed down to the Riverwalk. San Antonio has a very long river that runs right through and beneath the city. To walk along it, you need to walk down a couple of flights of stairs from the street level. At the street level, it is just a normal city, and when you walk down, there are restaurants, shops and bars that line the river, and paths that follow it all around. It was very beautiful!

Random little waterfall along the river

The Alamo

The river at night

That night I met up with Reggie, a local who I had met the previous day in Austin. We strolled around the Riverwalk for a while, got incredible ice cream and looked in all the cool stores. We visited the Alamo as well, but it was closed, so we couldn't go inside. He then took me to a TexMex restaurant called Chuy's. I had been assured that Chuy's was some of the best TexMex food, but I was underwhelmed by the enchilada and tostada. Real Mexican food is the way to go!

Though I liked the beer and Strawberry daiquiri