Jan 27
I spent 80 nights in hotels in 2018 staying at 29 different ones. No wonder the other half says I’m never at home.
Picking my Top Five Favourite Hotels from 2018 was extremely difficult as I was very fortunate to stay in some great places, a few I’d been to before such as last year’s favourite, the 1 Hotel in Miami.
We were in Texas back in the February drawn to the Lone Star state by the rodeo, held in the city of San Antonio, which was celebrating it’s 300th birthday. Two million tickets were sold for the The San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo which is spread over two and a bit weeks and city was enveloped in rodeo fever. The whole deal, which as you would expect in Texas, was big and took place in and around the AT&T Center, home to the San Antonio Spurs, who play all their games for a month away from home during rodeo season.
We based ourselves at The Pearl, an historic hotel and foodie emporium, that was long home to the famed Pearl Brewery. It was Otto Koehler and after his death, daughter Emma that made the Pearl Brewery one of the most iconic in America. It survived Prohibition, the Great Depression, two wars and then various ownership struggles and takeovers but finally succumbed to financial problems when then owner Pabst closed it down in 2001.
Mind you with the onset of retro taste buds Pabst, which no longer brews beer, now markets it’s old brands including Pearl through licensing agreements, I could still drink Pearl beer locally in San Antonio, and it was very good.
After a week, ten days, that saw me in Boston, Norfolk (Virginia), Miami and Orlando, I could do with sitting still a little, but no, the island-feavered-other-half wants to get away for a few days over half term, so she has booked us a trip to go and see the rodeo.
We are off to San Antonio in Texas tomorrow, a place I have never been, with the main act being my other-half’s seemingly new fascination with bucking broncos and cowboy boots. Our little ‘un’s going to love it with 2,000 pigs and cattle to play with as well as a petting zoo and pony rides.
Sarasota, Florida
