Continuing our 50th celebration (part 2)

We continued the celebration of our 50th month-versary on Tuesday, celebrating our "golden" month-versary, with lunch, where else but....

Golden Corral!!! (You should know by now that Carl loves buffets, and particularly Golden Corrals!)

This was one of the nicest Golden Corrals we have visited -- very open, bright, clean...

... and we got there early enough to be able to get both breakfast and lunch options!

After filling up at Golden Corral, we drove into downtown San Antonio...

... to visit The Alamo. There was a lot of construction going on in the area, with closed streets causing some difficulty getting around, but we found the area, found parking (a couple of blocks away at less than 50% of the cost of the closer parking!), and walked to The Alamo. I had booked free tickets a few weeks ago that would let us enter the church anytime on Tuesday.

Outside The Alamo, there was a lady taking pictures that we could claim later in the gift shop. We decided to purchase them as our "month-versary" remembrance picture! When they showed them to us, I recognized that they put in different backgrounds, but since they took the picture in front of The Alamo, near the doors, I thought this one might be an actual picture -- but there were so many people around, after examining it here at home,I'm certain that this is "created" like the others in front of a green screen! I'll post the other pictures at the bottom of this blog entry.

The building across the street had a screen up as they are doing construction. Some type of visitor center for The Alamo is going into that space, I think.

Inside The Alamo church.

At the front of the church - the 6 flags representing the 6 nations which have ruled over Texas - the following is quoted from a source on reddit: "Spain(Represented by the Royal Banner of Castile-Leon)-France(Represented by the Bourbon Flag)-US-Republic (and later State) of Texas-Mexico-CSA (nice that they went with one of the actual CSA flags and not the modern "Confederate flag")"

At the front also is a listing of all of the individuals fighting with the Texas Rebels who died at The Alamo.

View toward the entrance of the church. There were a LOT of people in there - so it was rather loud and there was a line to get into the sacristy - which we decided to skip.

We went instead to the Long Barracks, where there was a documentary film showing.

A view of The Alamo from the front...

... another tourist offered to take our picture there, so we got a "real" picture in front of The Alamo too!

One of the interesting buildings nearby - this is now The Emily Morgan Hotel.

It was a bit disconcerting to me that the narrative that I read and heard at The Alamo this visit was quite different from what I had seen and heard in the past. The first time I visited The Alamo was back in the mid '80s and it happened that we visited *on* March 6 (anniversary date of the fateful battle). I remember being so moved by the story and what I learned there. We visited again in 1992 on our "Epic Journey Around Texas" with both Dwayne's and my Dads and Peggy too. Again, it was very moving. For some reason, this time, it was not; I don't know whether it was due to the crowds, or the changes in the narrative (the current narrative seems to be more "balanced" in its viewpoint and not so "rah-rah" for Texas), or just that I was *expecting* to be moved -- at any rate, it was a little disappointing! We still enjoyed visiting, just not quite the experience that I was anticipating.

Finally -- the other pictures (green-screen-like with different backgrounds) that the photography service at The Alamo provided us:

As if we were right in front (and very close to the camera?)

Next to a fountain (we didn't see a fountain there at all, but we didn't walk over all of the grounds)

Under the live oak tree in the garden - the live oaks are gorgeous in this area!

More in the next post from San Antonio!