This is part two of the trip narrative; you should read them in order. If you haven't read Part One, click on this link. (And here's a link to all the pictures from the trip.)
The Laredo Taco Company is the name of a chain of convenience-store taco stands around South Texas. Being something of an aficionado of the taco, I felt no compunction about pooh-poohing the untried quality of their wares. But then a neighbour of mine, seeing one of their locations in passing, reminisced fondly about the old days when she and her colleagues would get lunch there, to go. Having spotted no real taquerías in the immediate vicinity of our condo, I decided this was the time to give it a try.
To my surprise, it was not simply a heat lamp over a supply of ready-made tacos bound in foil, but a Subway-style collection of ingredients with a grill at the ready. I ordered a bacon-and-egg taco on corn, and a potato-and-egg taco, also on corn, with cheese on both. My first hint that this breakfast would confirm my prejudices came when the woman behind the counter looked at me in amazement and said, disbelievingly, "On corn?" I assured her that was what I had said. It provoked an urgent whispered conference with her associate while I went to the register and paid.
I collected my tacos in a brown-paper bag and went back to the condo for breakfast. On unwrapping the tacos, I found that their corn tortillas were the poor-quality dry five-inch circles of masa one gets in plastic pouches at HEB. They are too small for the use to which Laredo Taco Company puts them, so each taco had two tortillas enclosing it. (Double the deficiency.) As concerns the quantity of filling, that is a point in their favour. As for the quality, it was reasonably good. The eggs were cooked very nicely, and they and the additives were plentiful. But wouldn't you think that you could tell the difference, by taste if not appearance, between potatoes and bacon? I could not. And the bag, I found, did not include any kind of salsa, which made for a serious lack. (There probably were salsa options available at the shop, but I didn't notice any.) All in all, a dissatisfying breakfast, but I may try them again in a day or two, with flour tortillas and a search for condiments. At least the service was reasonably good and the price was not outrageous. Besides, if there aren't any other taco options, I'll be desperate.
Having thus fortified myself, I was able to cart this menagerie of people down the road to the beach in the National Seashore, where we spent the rest of the morning. The park service gives out garbage bags at the visitors' center, to encourage users to clean up little patches of beach around them. We took one, and had it full inside of an hour. Next time we'll take more, as there's plenty of trash washed up from Points South along the Padre Island strand. (The park ranger says that's where most of it comes from.) We set up our new beach umbrella (not the one we bought in San Antonio and left sitting in our garage, but the one we bought to replace it) and put out a kind of plastic rug under it, weighted down by sand in the pockets provided for that purpose, and made good use of the water and the beach for the rest of the morning. Nancy even saw a sea turtle -- a smallish one -- in the water.
We grabbed food to go from Subway and relaxed at our condo for the rest of the day, until dinner at Doc's, a two-storey restaurant that has, at some point in the past fifty years, joined Snoopy's out on the island facing our back deck. Personally, I prefer Doc's to Snoopy's: it offers table service and the margaritas are better. And it offers live music upstairs, which I enjoyed. (I'm often surprised by the fact that so much live music is geared toward people who came of age before Friends debuted.)
We dragged our sated bellies back to the condo just in time to see the sun sink behind Snoopy's, then turned our attention to the games table. Monday night we cracked open Scattergories, which Nancy & Jeff had never played (and Sherry and I hadn't played in decades), and went through five rounds. Sherry won one round convincingly; she and I drew the rest, or won by no more than a single point.
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| one of the sea turtles |
Our plan for Tuesday was to go first to the State Aquarium, and then the local museum of science and history. We got out to North Beach just before 11 in the morning, and ended up staying at the aquarium until almost five PM. It consists of two main exhibits: the Gulf and the (new) Caribbean halls, plus some exterior exhibits on particular animals: dophins, otters, rays, turtles, etc.
We saw the dolphin show first. I found myself wondering if those animals, who had all been in the aquarium at least 15 years (one, twice that long) felt any sense of imprisonment, or if they were like dogs, happy to be kept as a pet. (I also wonder why it is that all the trainers -- presumably a position of some glamour in the hierarchy of the aquarium, are female, but let's not go there.) Next, we went to the Turtle Talk, and heard (through an irritatingly static-y headset) about the various rescue turtles in the aquarium. They only keep the ones that are too seriously injured to release into the wild, and have five on hand now. One has air bubbles trapped under her shell and can't descend in the water; another has only one flipper remaining after getting tangled in fishing line. I forget what injuries the others have sustained, but I'm thankful that there's a place where they can at least live out their lives unthreatened.
Nancy and Sherry went to see a film about octopi that afternoon. I was in the Gulf section, watching people in front of the oil-platform exhibit, when I got a text that said "We are going to see the octopus movie. Go through the gift shop." So when they closed the theater doors and the movie started I was in the gift shop, trying to figure out why Nancy considered it a Must-See part of the aquarium. (It definitely isn't.) It sounded afterwards like the octopus movie was a highlight of our visit, though; or at least, was for them & would have been for me.
Dinner Tuesday night was at a little Mexican place just outside the subdivision we're in, a place called Isla. Good service, good prices, way too much food. I thought the seasonings were a little heavy-handed, but nothing really to bitch about, damn it. None of us was able to finish our plates. (We did, though, finish our margaritas....)
We came back to play a few rounds of Hoopla before switching to Scattergories. It almost came to blows when Jeff insisted on credit for his answer to "things that are sticky": A pointed stick. ("Ask Ali, what's stickier than a pointed stick?" I didn't get the reference, but can imagine what it's about. But I still insisted that a pointed stick is NOT "sticky.") In return, he argued against my later answer to "countries that start with O" -- Oesterreich -- but that was just petty revenge: if you don't use the umlaut, it starts with O. (And if you do, it starts with Ö, and isn't that an 'O'?) Anyway, we all got over it and played probably three rounds of the game. Sherry won one round, and we tied once. She was all like "I finally won one," as though it had never happened, like I win all the time. I don't, but she like to feel oppressed. I'm not saying it's her fault, I'm just saying I blame her.
