San Antonio Daytrip

San Antonio is my favorite place for a daytrip - there is so much to do, so much history and atmosphere, and such variety of experience to be had.  We started off our weekend trip with lunch at Shilo's, an old-time German-Texan institution right in the heart of touristy downtown. Yes, it is full of tourists, but no matter - it's a fabulous survivor, with its wooden booths, raw plaster walls and tin ceiling.  The menu is full of German-Texan specialties like bratwurst and other sausages, potato pancakes, and sauerkraut.  The root beer is homemade and delicious.

Shilo's (photo from their website)

After lunch the relatives we were touring with suggested going for a boat ride, which is something we'd never done, but which suddenly sounded perfect after such a heavy lunch.  The Alamo could wait.  We picked up tickets down by the riverbank and after a few minutes wait were cruising peacefully along the river listening to our thankfully-low-key and knowledgeable tour guide.  The best parts were when we left the main part of the busy river walk, and explored the more workaday parts of the river - there's just no other way to get this interesting perspective on the city.

One of the floodgates on the San Antonio River (we're about to go through it here)

A river through the city...

And of course - the Alamo!

A bit later, we wandered all around the Alamo, which has lovely (if crowded) grounds.  A side building, originally the Old Convento, houses displays of nineteenth-century military uniforms, guns, swords, and other artifacts.  Outside, my son eagerly joined the crowd of children peering down into the acequia at the huge carp swimming to and fro.  I admit, these fish were really beautiful!

Later on, we tried to dine at La Gloria, but the hour-long wait again put us off.  Instead we found Tomatillo's, just a few blocks up Broadway.  This place is unassuming from the outside and couldn't be called hip, exactly, but has pretty darn good straightforward tex-mex (and good-enough margaritas served in comically large goblets).  Are you traveling with a bunch of kids and just need a good tex-mex place that will make everybody happy?  Tomatillo's is your place.

We had never visited the San Antonio Botanical Garden before, and boy, were we missing out!  It's beautiful and expansive, with so much to explore.  This was how we spent the next morning (and we'll need to go back, we couldn't see everything in just a few hours).

My son pointed out that this tree's not so great for climbing (there's a wonderful collection of potted citrus in the Orangerie in the background)

A map of the Gardens

The Gardens include some charmingly tiny historic houses, wide open lawns for running around in, a children's vegetable garden, a winding acequia, and a small Japanese garden with incredible bamboo fencing...

The Japanese Garden

There is also a series of rather futuristic glass pavilions and courtyards presiding over the site. My favorite, from a conceptual standpoint, was the Tropical Room, which housed coffee, chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, and allspice plants - and many more in a similar vein. Here is the beautiful Desert Room...

p.s. I found out - sadly, too late for this little trip - that Trader Joe's is now open in San Antonio, in the lovely Alamo Heights neighborhood!  The perfect place for weekend trip snacks, right?  Of course, Central Market is always great too (that's where we went - it's worth checking out if you've never been.  Best supermarket ever.).

Copenhagen, Denmark

What follows is a verrrry incomplete list of Places You Must Take Your Child While in Copenhagen (or Kobenhavn) – after all, we were there for less than a week!  Not nearly enough time to do everything we wanted.  So instead of an exhaustive list, I’ll tell you what we did do that was wonderful – which was just about everything!  What fabulous spots did you find while in Copenhagen?   

Tivoli Let’s just get this one out of the way, because, come on: TIVOLI!  It’s always the first thing on everyone’s list.  Yes, it was fun.  However our son was too short to go on most of the rides (he was 5 1/2), so we spent much of our time there at Petzi’s World, which is an admittedly delightful playground within Tivoli.  We also spent an insanely long time in line waiting to order food. I think next time we may skip Tivoli and head to Bakken, another historic pleasure park located outside of the city, in a more bucolic setting. 

Petzi's World at Tivoli

National Museum of Denmark The National Museum is a winner for everybody – beautiful displays of art, artifacts, interior architecture, mummies, etc. There is also a wonderful kid’s play area that includes a Viking boat, enchanting settings for dress-up and make-believe, and lots of opportunities for climbing and hiding.

Rosenborg Palace Garden We could have spent all day here – the formal gardens are so beautiful, and so relaxing to simply wander around.  Our son could have spent all day just in the gorgeous playground here.  Its design is incorporated into the formal arrangement of the gardens as a whole, and is enclosed by hedges.  Four distinct play areas extend from a central sandpit, which has a "moat" and is presided over by two incredible carved wooden dragons.  The play areas are simple and even elegant – one was a small forest of wooden posts, some of them with little carved elements here and there.  Another area was similar, but with wooden stumps instead of posts. There is a small café across the path if you get hungry.

Rosenborg Castle and Royal Treasure The castle is beautiful, and do explore it.  But the Royal Treasure – good lord!  The collection of jewels is large and exquisite and so sparkly it made me crazy. 

The University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden We wandered into these gardens by chance late one afternoon, and were glad we did.  It’s a beautiful and fascinating place to wander and make discoveries.  So many winding paths and little botanical worlds within the garden.

                       

The Round Tower Do you need to exhaust your young one?  The Round Tower features a winding interior ramp that goes up and up and up…  at the top there is a small outside viewing area, with views all around.  We were grateful for the tiny and unexpected bathroom about halfway up.

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art This wonderful museum is a few train stops north of the city and we almost didn’t go for that silly reason – I’m so glad we did!  The collections and exhibits were terrific, and the site itself, studded with large sculptures, is just a delight to stroll around.  There is a large grassy hill (great for rolling down) that looks out over the sea, with a wooded hillside criss-crossed with narrow footpaths.  The footpaths are part of an art installation.  

At the rear of the building is a large children’s wing, with connected rooms for different art activities.  The small lego room features a table and wall covered in grey lego flat pieces – all of the legos were yellow.  This simplified color palette really makes you focus on form – I thought it was great.  At the bottom of the wing is a large sculpture studio, with generous tables and slabs of clay ready to be worked.  From here we headed right out into the back of the property, where a path winds around a small lake (look for the miniature houses hidden in the woods) and a long hillside slide proved irresistible to my son. 

Royal Naval Museum This museum is home to hundreds of meticulously crafted scale model sailing ships.  I didn’t think of this as my cup of tea before we went, but I found them stunning.  The ships were used as models for shipbuilders, who might not be able to read or understand technical drawings.  My son was more interested in the very detailed dioramas dramatizing historic sea battles.  There’s also a terrific children’s play area in the basement with a pirate ship and “docks”.

Eating

  

While I wish we had had the chance to dine at Noma, we mostly kept it cheap and no-frills when it came to meals.  This involved eating more hot dogs than I really care to admit.  We couldn’t believe how many hot dog vendors we came across, but apparently it is a Thing.  Luckily, we also found a great little pizza place near our hotel, right next to a skate park – we dined al fresco and O got to practice his version of parkour as soon as he was finished.

Pizzaria La Fiorita: corner of Nansengade and Ahlefeldtsgade Streets