San Antonio: A tourist’s dream town
San Antonio seems like the epitome of a southwest town. It’s history centers around battles for land,and all that lay beneath, and around missionaries coming in to “save” the locals from….I’m not sure what. That aside, San Antonio is a visual treat for the eyes. We especially enjoyed the architecture, in particular the iron work.
just one example of the amazing iron work we saw here.
The first thing that attracted our attention was Mission San Jose. It is a mission with a working church, but from the outside it lookes like a fortress. In fact, it was fortified with thick stone walls and holes for guns, just in case those pesky French decided to try to take some of the land, or corrupt the natives.
front view
side view
inside view
There’s a lot more I could say about this–“saving” the natives, etc.–but I’ll keep that to myself for now. Let’s just say the place was huge, and fortified and the natives lived in relative squalor compared to the saviors. Like Forrest Gump, that’s all I got ta say ’bout that!
Moving on…
The Alamo is supposedly a “must-see” when you’re in San Antonio. Well, don’t get your hopes up. It’s a small mission/fortress in the middle of town that is dwarfed by its modern neighbors.
The Alamo
Close up
The Alamo got caught up in the Texas Revolution where a lot of transplanted Europeans (Texians) died because the native Mexicans outsmarted them. It’s a nice building, and attracts hundreds of people every day. Again, peace lover that I am, I could say a lot more, but I’ll plead the Forrest Gump amendment and say no more.
I’d rather get on to prettier things, like the old houses and the new Riverwalk…in my next post.
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on the road to simplicity 