Botanical Gardens

After breakfast, we picked up our rental car from the Marriot hotel and drove out to the Botanical Gardens. The gardens comprise formal and display gardens, the Native Texas Trail, consisting of plant communities characteristic of the Hill Country, East Texas Piney Woods, and South Texas and the most impressive Lucile Halsell Conservatory buildings, designed by Emilio Ambasz, and built by the San Antonio Botanical Society at a cost of $6.9 million, which opened to the public on February 29, 1988. Plants from desert regions to equatorial rainforests are housed in these individual glass buildings tucked into the earth. Then we headed north from San Antonio into the Hill Country and to Fredericksburg, where we were to stay in a Bed and Breakfast for the next three nights. Less than an hours drive from San Antonio, Fredericksburg has a totally different feel - you could almost be in a different country. Baron Ottfried Hans von Meusebach was one of 10 nobles who formed a society designed to help Gemans resettle in Texas, where they would be safe from political persecution and economic hardship. In 1846, he took 120 settlers in ox-drawn cartrs from New Braunfels to this site, which he named for Prince Frederick of Prussia. The first thing that struck us was the width of the mile-long main street which is still wide enough for a team of oxen to turn around in! The town has excellent shopping and lots of historic sites and is a very popular place for residents of San Antonio and Austin to flock to on weekends.

Our B&B was delightful, with a beautiful peaceful garden with a pond. Our hosts put wine out in the living room every afternoon, together with freshly-baked cookies, and we would sit and enjoy these by the pond and relax for a while before going out to dinner. Dinner that evening was in a lovely German restaurant in the town.