A Visit To El Tourista Spectacularrrrrr...

Went down to San Antonio to visit friends who were in from out of town.

Now, the thing that gives me the red ass is when you've actually lived somewhere and people who haven't refuse to listen to the voice of reason.

Take for example... The Riverwalk.

I know where to eat and where to not go. For example, you do not go to the first food stop on the river simply because you are starving wicked hungry and MUST eat and have a margarita first.

Against my better counsel, that's exactly what happened. The service was atrocious, the food was WAAAAY overpriced and the topper was the band. Get this, they had a pretty reasonable lineup. The guitar player was good, the drummer was good, the bass/vocalist was good. The guy playing the synthesizer? He sucked the life out of the whole band.

First off, his keyboard was way too loud.
Secondly, he liked to get overly creative. I don't care how much of a musical genius you think you are, NO ONE thinks that inserting the shower drama music from Psycho into a country music love song is EVER a good idea.

After that, we stopped into Durty Nelly's which is fairly decent. Kind of a grimy Irish-piano-bar-pub kind of feel to it. We drank nicely before retreating back to my friends' hotel room.

Soon, hunger struck again and they had the urge to get food. My suggestion was IHOP, since I knew the near-downtown location well enough to know that it was a good late night suggestion.

They, however, decided to go against my counsel and chose Denny's instead.

Having had TWO bad experiences with Denny's (in two other locations), I was for damn sure not going to eat there. But being overruled, we went anyways.

For background on the past incidents:

1) Denny's incident #1 - My brother found chewing gum in his food. No, I am NOT making that up.
2) Denny's incident #2 - I ordered a hamburger and was treated to a burger that was cooked on the outside but frozen solid on the inside.

Those, plus the fact that the lighting in Denny's gives their food this ungodly yellow hue, reasons give me pause alone.

Well, we had the opportunity to sit in a filthy booth in a filthy restaurant surrounded by prostitutes, schizophrenics and drunken louts. I thought I was safe getting the ice cream and brownie (after much urging by my friends to eat something), but the frequent ensuing trips to the Little Loggers' Room for a short while thereafter proved that my hypothesis was thoroughly disproved.

So, next time someone says "hey, let's get us some tasty Denny's" to me, they're getting a salmon to the face.

But, the visit was fun and we still managed a good time, which was really the important thing! Yaaay!