For our 1st Year Anniversary, Carolyn and I decided to spend a
couple nights at the Gaylord Texan, the Hotel and Convention Center
that she had her bridal pictures taken at. It's considered a
Resort Hotel, I suppose due to the fact that it has several
restaurants, shops, pools, and a full spa on the grounds.
The
structure itself is truly massive. There are over 1500 rooms spread out
over several buildings, with the areas in between completely covered by
a glass dome. In the middle of the main atrium, there is a huge
star that is visible from the sky when you fly into Dallas, and it's lit
up at night. We spent a couple hours just walking around and
seeing all the public parts of the hotel, and I feel like we must have
missed something. Most of the time you felt like you were
outside, but weren't.
An
interesting feature of the Gaylord is
the Riverwalk Atrium. It is not a huge area, but it tries to
recreate the feel of the Riverwalk in San Antonio. I've been to
the real riverwalk, and you really can't compare the two, but for
tourists I suppose it gives you a taste without having to travel a
couple hundred miles. It is accurate in how there is no railing,
and bridges that cross the water, and restaurants that basically line
the water, but the similarities stop there. I won't say it's not
nice, but it doesn't beat or match the real thing. Well, the real
thing isn't air conditioned 24/7, so I guess the Gaylord has that going
for it.
The
pools and other hotel amenities you might be expecting are top
notch. The outdoor pool is quite large, but was pretty crowded
whenever the weather was nice. The indoor pool was large, perhaps
even olympic-sized, but we only stopped in to see it for a
minute. The rooms were well maintained, and had enough features
for me to feel like I was getting my money's worth. That's not a
light compliment, as the rooms are pretty expensive. We decided
to get a nicer room than we would have normally, partially because we
were using some of our Wedding money we had saved, and also because we
weren't going to be returning soon, so we wanted it to be
special. Also, the difference between the best room and the worst
room isn't much in comparison to the base cost of any room, probably
less than 25% of the cost.
The
view from the room was great. We had originally been put in a 4th
floor room overlooking the relatively small Riverwalk Atrium, but after
seeing it, I went back to the desk to be upgraded to a better
room. Since we weren't in a hurry, and were paying for a good
room, I told them we were willing to wait if it would mean a room
overlooking the main atrium. They said a room in the section we
wanted would be available in about an hour, so we walked the grounds
while they worked on the room. When we got our new room, it was
on the 7th floor (out of 9), and just had a beautiful view. It
was great to be able to sit on our balcony and overlook the areas where
Carolyn had had her bridal pictures taken, and see a lot of the
activity going on in the hotel.
They
have several restaurants at the hotel, as I've mentioned earlier, but
for the most part the food was fairly overpriced. There was no
free breakfast option, I think the cheapest you could get was $16, and
that was for cereal, milk, juice, and a little fruit. Needless to
say, we skipped breakfast. Lunch is better, but there was nothing
for less than about $10. I think a cold sandwich at a shop was
only $8. But a filling meal of ribs, beans, coleslaw, and lots of
chips at the Texan Station (the sports bar and grill) was only
$14. There was also a mexican buffet at the Riverwalk cafe, but
it was $21 for lunch, or $28 for dinner. We ate at Texan Station
once, and at one of the nicer places, Ama Lur, for our Anniversary
dinner. The meal was pretty expensive, but the food was quite
good. We were both so full from lunch, we didn't need an
appetizer or extra sides with our meals, so we got off for less than
what we might have otherwise.
Afterwards,
we went on a little photo shoot. We were both dressed up, and
enjoyed going around taking pictures of each other and of us together
(self timers are great). The Gaylord has an entire different
atmosphere at night, and is just beautifully lit. There are
streams flowing throughout all the atriums, and many paths lined with
plants and trees that make lovely backdrops. One nice thing about
the night time Gaylord is the lack of tourists and vistors that aren't
staying the night, but only came to visit during the day. Many of
the conferences that are meeting at the convention center have
activities at night, and although I'm sure they are nice, I doubt they
could have as nice of scenery as what is available in the various
atriums.
We
also ate our wedding cake, which tasted almost as good a year later as
I remember it tasting the night of our wedding (a couple big slices
were packed up for us to take with us to the hotel). It was hard
to believe it had been 365 days since the last time we had that cake,
it had passed so fast. We would have to leave the Gaylord in the
morning, but our time there would never be forgotten.
Scenery Pictures
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Pictures of Us
