...Not get robbed in the hotel lobby!
I'd been looking forward to this past weekend for quite some time. I got to hang out with my friend, Kris. She and I have been friends for about 14 years now. We've had our ups and downs, and our fair share of disagreements, but one thing I've always felt was that she'll always be in my life. Granted, it's been in a rather diminished capacity since we both moved away from Dallas, but nonetheless, we stay in touch and I still consider her one of my BFFs.
So we planned a girly trip. Just the two of us. We shopped around, looked for deals. We finally settled on San Antonio because Kris could get a decent fare from Chicago, and I could drive, which means we could keep our cost down by consolidating the total cost of the trip and dividing it. San Antonio is actually a fun city to visit because of the River Walk.
The day finally arrives. I get in the car and drive the 1.5 hours to San Antonio and pick Kris up at the airport (after briefly getting lost). We drive to some place near the airport called Stone Works to meet our old buddy, Blake, who used to live in the same apartment complex as us in Dallas, and who is a good friend of Kris's hubby. It was nice to sit out on the patio in the gorgeous Texas spring weather and catch up with old friends. Afterwards we made our way to the hotel. We stayed at the Drury Plaza on the river walk. Upon arrival we got out of the car at the valet, Kris pulled some money out of her purse to tip the guy, and we took our bags and went to check in. I checked us in since my name was on the reservation and we made our way up to our room on the 19th floor. Our room was actually really cool. Nice flat screen TV, big bathroom, two queen sized beds, somewhat of a view, though from up above the river walk is nothing but a bunch of trees.
About 3 minutes after arriving in our room, Kris realizes she doesn't have her purse! We frantically search. Tear the whole room apart looking for it, practically. I went downstairs to see if she maybe had dropped it and someone handed it in. No luck. I went to the valet, nobody had seen it. I get Kris, and we both go with the valet to the car and check it. Maybe it fell off and is in the car. Though this makes NO sense because Kris took money out of her purse and tipped the valet AFTER we got out of the car. More searching, more retracing our steps, more looking in the car, more checking with the front desk. Nothing. The front desk clerk kept looking at us like we were crazy or drunk or both. No sympathy. That's so disappointing. They didn't offer any kind of assistance. After more searching we finally had to give up and come to the conclusion that it got snatched. The sad thing is that it was one of those purses with the long strap that you wear across your body (like a messenger bag), which usually equates to being secure. The only thing we can think is that someone cut it off of her, which in itself is scary that some thug came that close to Kris with a knife!
We consoled ourselves with the thought that it could have been much, much worse. The thug could have taken it by force. Though to be honest, I'd prefer that because a) we'd know what happened to it, and b) I could have had the opportunity to open up a can of whoop ass on someone who totally deserved it ;-)
Anyway, Kris had to have her husband fed-ex her passport to her so that she could get back home on Sunday, because, of course, her ID was in the purse, along with her money and credit cards! Poor Kris! I felt so bad for her.
We tried to put the incident behind us and go about our business as we would have done had this not happened. And huge credit is due here to Kris because we did have a blast, though it was punctuated with moments of head scratching and ponderings of how the hell it could have happened.
That evening, after consoling ourselves by crawling into the bottom of a bottle of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay that I had the foresight to bring along, we went out on the River Walk in search of a place to drown our sorrows and watch the world go by. Mad Dogs piqued our interest simply because it had the Union Jack all over the place and I am a sucker for an English pub. Suffice it to say, though, that the Union Jack and phone booth were about as English as that place got. We found two open seats at the bar next to a cute couple, who we ended up spending quite a lot of time with that evening. Connie and Rick from Washington (state, not D.C) were visiting for a weekend away from their kids. We had so much fun with them and many shots later Kris and I were stumbling down the river walk in search of some food. We ate dinner at some restaurant, but neither of us can recall which one... what we do recall is that we spilled 2 glasses of wine and finally I think the waiter got tired of us doing that and moved us to another table that didn't wobble ;-). After dinner we thought we'd call it a night and head back to the hotel. We found ourselves clutching on to each other so that neither of us fell into the river. As we passed by one tiny bar near our hotel we heard live jazz music so we stumbled inside to find everyone in the place up and dancing around their tables. So we joined them. Pretty soon the band stopped playing and some drunk lady requested that they play while she sang Patsy Cline's "Crazy", even though she didn't know the words. She asked for someone to help her out so I volunteered for the job and howled out a very bad rendition with her while everyone pretended it was awesome and danced. It was very bad. Trust me on this.
When we finally made our way back to the hotel we thought it'd be a good idea to go hot tubbing so we donned our bathing suits and made our way up to the roof top pool, only to find that it was closed!
I called down to the front desk and pleaded with the manager to open it for us. He was very nice about it but wouldn't do it because of city ordinance. At one point I asked him why the ordinance was in place and he told me because people commit suicide off the roof. I told him that was Darwin's theory at work and it was his duty as a good world citizen to help the idiots out! Fortunately he thought it was as funny as I did.
Saturday morning we both woke up feeling a little impaired. We had our free breakfast then went for a dip in the hot tub/pool. After that we made our way out for a day of sightseeing. The weekend we chose just happened to be Fiesta weekend and there was much to see and do. We walked down to the carnival over by the Alamodome and took in the sights, sounds, and smells. I made Kris race me down the bumpy slide - she was a good sport about it and the adrenaline rush helped us both feel better from our hang overs.
We spent quite a bit of time walking around the River Walk that afternoon, stopping briefly to talk to the guys working on the garbage barge to ask if they had seen a black purse in the river. We assumed that the thief would dump it in the river after removing the cash from it. No luck, but we did get some good tips from them on other places to see besides the River Walk. On their recommendation, we made our way to Market Square where more of the festival was happening. Great for people watching. Afterwards we headed back to the River and found a restaurant to have a late lunch and do some people watching. A mariachi band played while a bachelorette party embarrassed some poor woman. We saw a woman serenade her man, backed by the mariachi band, which was quite unique and very romantic.
That evening we went to the hotel happy hour, then set off in search of adventure again. We spent some time at Hard Rock Cafe where we chatted with a nice military boy for a while, then we headed back over to Mad Dogs (after going back to the hotel to pick up Kris's passport since the Mad Dog bouncer wouldn't let us in without it). More good people watching. Girls all booty dancing on the stage and making complete arses of themselves. Very entertaining. We dropped in at Coyote Ugly, purely because Kris had never been to one and I thought it would be interesting. It wasn't. Very much the usual scene. Bunch of drunk ugly guys gawking as drunk ugly women gyrate on the bar next to the sober pretty ones that work there. We left that place pretty quickly and found ourselves in Waxy's Irish bar. There was a band playing a very bad rendition of a Bon Jovi song. Even badly done Bon Jovi is good, though :-) After getting some drinks we found a spot to sit at a large table where some more military guys were hanging out. I had a 20 minute conversation with a Sergent who got into the army because he's a meth addict. Lovely. Hey, at least he knew he had to do something about it. The army guys were fun to hang out with and kinda crazy. One had a penchant for wearing women's clothes it turns out ;-).
It was time to call it a night after that. We stumbled back to our hotel, not quite as much stumbling really as the night before, but details become sketchy.
We still don't know what happened to Kris's purse, we probably never will, and that will drive both of us nuts. We both wrote letters to the Drury Plaza's GM regarding their lack of concern for Kris's predicament. Hopefully they'll step up their customer service for the next person that happens to. After filing a police report, we found out that it's quite common in that area for purse snatchings to happen, though the hotel disavowed all knowledge of that. Naturally.
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