Saturday

Since getting down to Texas, I've been a bit slow in indulging my inner tourist. I've been to Dallas and Houston. I've gone out exploring a bit in the Hill Country. I've even done a little wandering around downtown Austin. I have not quite gone out and really started poking around. That changed up this weekend.

Saturday I went down to San Antonio with a friend. After finishing up a small errand, we headed down to the downtown area to check out the Alamo and the surrounding area.

I forget sometimes how much I love exploring new places. In particular new places with history associated with them. The part most folks think of as the Alamo is actually the original sanctuary/church/shrine area for the old mission. I've seen my share of missions in my travels through the southwest. This one is a pretty good size actually. To most folks it seems small. They don't understand that the Alamo was a complex of buildings and walls, originally designed to protect settlers from hostile Indians (of the Native American type, not the Sub Continent type).

From the Alamo we wandered down to the Riverwalk area, then looped back around and up. There's some simply amazing old buildings through downtown. You have buildings reflection the old Mission style, then buildings that went up during the art deco era of the 20s and 30s. I love walking down those kinds of streets. If you close your eyes and listen, you can hear the old Fords rumbling down roughly paved streets, see the mix of Tejanos, cowbody and city folk blending as they walk through the doors of Woolworth. You can look up at the windows and just make out secretaries typing away, if you strain to hear you can catch a whisper of phones ringing.

The light was beautiful as we made it back to the car in late afternoon. I fired of a couple quick shots from the camera just to remind myself of time and light quality. I can tell San Antonio is going to be a good place to wander down to periodically and play.

I'm reminded of the need to re institute tourist day every month so I get out and play. It was a great day.