Bonus Texas Rodeo

So the whole reason we were playing around in San Antonio, Texas in the first place was that we were on our way down to Mexico to go to our friend Viry's brother's wedding. Our flight was supposed to be today but got canceled. This set off a bunch of frantic attempts to salvage traveling today because we were going to miss some fun stuff, such as going to a winery we were looking forward to. At one point we were even looking into taking a bus as Monterrey is not that far away. It would have probably been a horrible ride though so we just booked the same flight the next day and came up with some fun stuff to do on our bonus Texas day.

Gruene Hall in the town of Gruene, Texas, is the oldest of a string of Hill Country dance halls. It has been continuously operating since 1878.

The good book: "Selling out Gruene Hall, despite its small size, is a rite of passage for country musicians, following in the footsteps of George Strait and Merle Haggard."

Even more important than all the history blah blah about the hall is that it was featured in 1996' Michael starring John Travolta as the Archangel Michael.

Cantina del Rio called to me with this jalapeño margarita sign. Since discovering spicy margaritas in the San Antonio river walk I drink about seven a day. 

They quench the very thirst that they inspire. It's a very yin and yang situation.

We headed back to San Antonio's AT&T Center where the Spurs play to enjoy the majesty of the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo.

We started off strong with some entertaining sheep child abuse. Watching a kid getting thrown off an animal is just good clean family entertainment.

All of that bull riding had me hungry for some beef. In-N-Out Burger got it done.

I was drawn back to the magical Pearl District. This time we checked out the swanky Sternewirth, the hotel Emma's amazing bar.

There was a lot of brewery history on the walls. These defunct awesome breweries often remind me of Anheuser-Busch and how lucky St. Louis is that it has survived.

I found some money stapled to some bible crap. Poseidon works in mysterious ways.

The Pearl of San Antonio

Zoe left our San Antonio crew and went back to St. Louis, but we still had some time to kill before it was time to proceed down to Mexico. At this point I was working remotely during the day, so there wasn't much action until later on.

Our Airbnb's neighborhood was pretty understatedly fancy, with lots of beautiful old houses to look at.

Southerleigh Fine Food and Brewery is set in the friggin magnificent and cavernous old Pearl Brewhouse which was built in 1894.

Southerleigh's famous fried snapper throats:

Crystal aioli, celery root remoulade

One of my life rules is that if a menu says that a thing is their famous thing, I'm going to order it. Even if it's a pile of fried fish fins. The things were fried so good and so naturally ruffled that they remined me of potato chips in a very weird way.

The entire Peark brewery operation has been turned into an entire district full of amazing shops and restaurants. There's even a hotel in one of the buildings that I was very jealous about not staying at.

This building was unfortunately locked but when I peeked through the window I was pretty excited about the beer bottle light fixtures.

Pearl was so amazing I would be tempted to come back here just to visit it again and see more of what it has to offer.

Back at the crib I saluted our fun brewery adventure with a Neapolitan flavored imperial milk stout from Belching Beaver Brewery.