We had picked San Antonio and the Texas Hill Country as our first destination because of our good friends Jim and Jerrie who were in the process of building their retirement home in New Braunfels, and had waxed lyrical about the Hill Country and the booming wine industry.  Jerrie provided the local route from Temple to SA so we skirted Austin and stayed off I-35! Result was a pleasant doddle to their rented house in a very nice gated community in San Antonio. They had offered to put us up for two weeks while we flat hunted, so that tells you what nice people they are!!  As many of you will know J&J are super cooks and dedicated winos so it was a bit like getting an invitation to stay in a 5 star resort!  Also, both are Texans therefore had a phenomenal information and guide service at our finger tips.  So – living in the lap of luxury and being given guided tours around SA, with odd jaunts out into the Hill Country, was a really good way to get the lay of the land!  San Antonio is now the 4th largest city in Texas with a population of over 2 million and a growth rate of 9% – not a small place! True to Texas it has a unbelievable road system with I-10, I-35,1-37 running through it, locked together by the 410 and 1604 loops.  With the I-10/1604 loop junction being seriously bad at or near rush hour – trying to merge 3 lanes into one followed by a merge with two other lanes just does not work – duh!  At one junction I counted 5 layers/flyovers!  Being Texans everyone drives at speed, and beware of pick-up trucks – especially Dodge Rams – they’ll take you out in a heart beat!  With a rough idea of the town and few likely spots where we thought we might set up home we set off into the melee of SA traffic.  We checked out the Pearl Brewery Lofts, Cevellos Lofts, 1800 Broadway, Tobin Lofts, as well as 3 complexes at The Quarry.  The Quarry is a new city within a city type thing, and is set around an old quarry that is now a golf course. The shopping center included Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s plus restaurants, bakeries, wine shops, etc.; you get the picture. Overall, flats were expensive and you didn’t get too much for your dollar, but the majority of the places we checked, even the expensive ones, received generally bad revues on various social media sites.  Also, the traffic was getting to us, even though we got to know a number of routes that kept us away from the main roads.  We then went back to basics and why we were in Texas in the first place – wine country!  If we lived downtown in the walk-to stuff environment that we liked, we would still have an at least an hour’s drive to get out to the Hill Country Wineries, and then, of course, the return trip. Not good, and really not what we were looking for in our old age, so it was off to Fredericksburg, the town at the heart of the wine country. Two trips later we had put a deposit down on a 2bed/2bath flat at the Terraces at Creekside, as well as enjoyed a couple of tastings. San Antonio is quite a town with an immense amount of history.  We visited the Alamo, but didn’t make into the church as there was an immense queue, caused, it would appear, by the photographer taking your photos at the entrance of the church.  Stupid or what?  The Alamo had been in the news recently as its operation was being taken away from the Daughters of the Republic of Texas to be run by the Texas General Land Office. It’s a beautiful site, and there were numerous trees in blossom for our visit with the scent wafting around the buildings. Despite the crowds you can definitely feel something of the history.  We also visited Mission San Jose just outside San Antonio, one of five missions built along the San Antonio river by the Spanish in the late 1600s – early 1700s , one of which is the Alamo. Truly an impressive site with a beautiful church and a huge granary – well worth a visit.  Apart from the history SA has become a true foody town with some seriously good restaurants.  Jim and Jerry took us to some of their favourite spots, including two outstanding Mexican restaurants – La Fonda on Main and SoLuna. The superb food at both made me realise what inferior food I’ve had at other ordinary Mexican spots. At both places we were introduced to chispas by J&J!  It means “lively” in Mexican and “esta chispa” is to get sloshed.  Appropriate as a couple of chispas does have an effect!  They are a version of a margarita but using good tequila and fresh lime juice/ingredients.  Truly delicious, and of course each restaurant has its own version, which means you have to try each variation. For a change of pace, Jerrie pointed out a new Indian restaurant called Tarka, quite close to the house and we went for lunch while Jim was working.  Really good food, and judging by the number of Indians in the restaurant it met their standards.  Ann also found a Szechuan dim-sum restaurant that was in a slightly tatty strip mall, but served good Szechuan food, though not true dim-sum as we know it from our Asia. So we had a good binge of ethnic food while doing our house hunting.