After leaving Van Horn, we continued east with only a couple of short stops on our way to San Antonio. We were there last winter but ran out of time to check out Riverwalk. Our original intention was to have Christmas dinner in the city, since we figured that there would be a selection of open restaurants to choose from. As we got closer and started to research our options, however, we had trouble finding a single place – beyond Denny’s of course – that was clearly open. So we called one of the nicer hotels near Riverwalk and asked the concierge, who verified that several restaurants were indeed open in the area.

After parking, we strolled down the walkway and scouted the place out a bit. We still didn’t notice anything open, in spite of it being crowded with people. After stopping into another hotel, we were directed to an Italian restaurant named Paesanos. We had a very nice meal and even took home some leftovers. We walked back to car and headed towards Houston, a smile on our faces and full stomachs.

Since we had spent most of the holiday driving, we decided to check out a nicer hotel for the night. We tried the Name Your Own Price feature of Priceline, landing a 4-star hotel for only $51. Or so we thought. When we arrived, we realized that we’d have to pay $16 to “self-park” our own vehicle in the garage and pay another $11 for basic wifi access (the hotel didn’t even have it available in the lobby). To add to the insult, the room would lack a refrigerator and microwave, which meant that we wouldn’t be able to eat our leftovers. Annoyed, we headed to bed early for what we hoped would result in an early start to the following day.