Lunch at Guenther House and Dinner with Travel Bug Susan and Bob

At Travelers World RV Park, San Antonio, Texas...

We rather enjoy touring historical homes that open their doors to the public so, after church, we were eager to have lunch at the Guenther House in downtown San Antonio. This lovely old house was built on the San Antonio River in the late 1800s by Carl Gilmar Guenther, a German immigrant who founded on the site a successful flour mill that later became Pioneer Flour Mills and still thrives today as the oldest family-owned business in the state. The mill originally used the flowing river water for power, hence its location on the riverbank. Guenther raised his seven children there, and the house continued to be used by the family until the 1940s. It was eventually opened to the public as a museum, gift shop and restaurant.

Here is a view of the patio seating in back of the house:

We ate inside, ordering an egg-bacon-sausage-biscuit breakfast for me and southwestern quiche for Sandy. Expectations for a good meal were high after several recommendations but, alas, not all was well on this visit. My breakfast was almost cold when it arrived, and nothing on the plate was memorable. Especially disappointing was the sausage, which was little more than a tasteless hockey puck, and the biscuit, a spongy and unidentifiable blob with not nearly enough shortening; this should have been an amateurish embarrassment for Pioneer Flour, whose name was lavishly mentioned on the menu. The chef should have trained under Sandy's mother and grandmother, who definitely knew how to make a proper biscuit.

On the other hand, the quiche was quite good, although slightly overcooked. The final nail in the coffin was the meal's wildly inflated forty-dollar cost. I tried vainly to justify having chosen to eat lunch here by telling myself that the tour of the house had been free. Perhaps another visit would provide a different experience, but I just don't think that's in the cards. However, it gives me just a tiny bit of comfort to ban the Guenther House Restaurant from being listed on my Favorite Restaurants page.

We had an experience that evening that made up many times for the unsatisfactory lunch. Inviting us for dinner were none other than Bob and Susan, the distaff member of the couple being better known to our RV blogging community as the author of "Travel Bug Susan." We had met these fine folks a few years ago at an RV Dreams rally in Kerrville and had been following their widely-read blog ever since. 

Bob and Susan had been fulltiming for a few years before discovering San Antonio and re-entering the workforce after settling in this RV park. Bob is an accountant and Susan works part time here at the park office. Susan served us some excellent turkey chili, and we enjoyed the fellowship immensely, learning a new board game in the process.

It's always a neat pleasure finally to interact with our fellow bloggers, whom we think we already know by having read so much about their travels and experiences. This gives us the benefit of a start in our relationship from a point way beyond that of being mere acquaintances but, indeed, friends. And thus it has been with all the bloggers whom we've met over the past ten years. In fact, I have been inspired to begin another blog page listing those that have transitioned from cyber friends to personal friends. I'll have it up and running pretty soon.

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.