San Antonio Notes

We have been back for a couple of weeks, but I wanted to leave a few thoughts about San Antonio. Great city to visit! Here are a few highlights.

The house we rented was on the RiverWalk.  It is really a great place to walk. The boat ride was informative. There was a boat parade on St. Patrick’s Day. The down side to the week we visited was that it was spring break in the area. Kids, kids, and more kids! Yikes.

The Japanese Gardens,  also known as Chinese Tea Gardens, Chinese Tea Garden Gate, and  the Chinese Sunken Garden Gate is beautiful. (But don’t get the Bubble Tea. It’s not very good.)

San Antonio, The Saga. The 24-minute film about 300 years of history  is shown on the facade of the San Fernando Cathedral. The visuals are amazing and the film is  choreographed with surround sound. Don’t miss it!

The Majestic Theater is breath-taking. What you see in the photos is the theater, not the set!

The food. San Antonio has great TexMex, but just about any other kind of food, too. We had great ramen at a neighborhood restaurant. Our last morning we had breakfast with our friend Chris. An old hand at SanAntonio, she was a great tour guide! Oh, I also found out I like margaritas!

photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid This photo is licensed under a Creative Commons license. If you use this photo within the terms of the license or make special arrangements to use the photo, please list the photo credit as “Scott Beale / Laughing Squid” and link the credit to http://laughingsquid.com.

We decided to visit the “hill country,” a few wineries and the LBJ ranch. Our first stop was the ranch, both a state park and a national park. The state park contains the boyhood home of LBJ, his grandparents’ cabin and the visitor center. The National Park is where the Johnson family home is located. LBJ and Ladybird Johnson donated their home to the National Park Service.  We visited Pedernales Cellars, Becker Vineyards, 4.0 Cellars and Lost Draw Cellars. The wine was pretty good, but I thought a little expensive.

The drive to wine country also included a stop in Luchenbach.

From Wikipedia: “Luckenbach’s population increased to a high of 492 in 1904, but by the 1960s it was almost a ghost town. A newspaper advertisement offering “town — pop. 3 — for sale” led Hondo Crouch, a rancher and Texas folklorist, to buy Luckenbach for $30,000 in 1970, in partnership with Kathy Morgan and actor Guoch Koock. Crouch used the town’s rights as a municipality to govern the dance hall as he saw fit.

Today Luckenbach maintains a ghost-town feel with its small population and strong western aesthetic. One of its two main buildings houses the remnants of a post office, a working saloon, and a general store. The other is the dance hall.”

On our way home we had to pass through Waco. Couldn’t miss a stop at Magnolia Farms, the creation of Chip and Joanna Gaines of the show Fixer Upper. It was insanely busy. If nothing else, they have made Waco a tourist destination.

So Many Museums

When you visit San Antonio the museum opportunities abound. We visited several.

The McNay. Marion McNay was a painter and art teacher. She inherited a fortune upon the death of her father. Her art collection, which focuses on 19th and 20th century Europen and American art, is housed in her beautiful Spanish Colonial Revival mansion. When she died, the mansion and art was bequeathed to the city of San Antonio. The collection and the home are both spectacular!

My favorite museum was the Briscoe Western Art Museum. I didn’t expect to like this museum as much as I did.  The museum is such a mix of sculpture, models, paintings and prints, that there is something for everyone.

 

We also made stops at the San Antonio Museum of Art and The Witte, both great museums. The Witte would be a great museum to visit with children. The animals of Texas exhibit is too much fun.

 

And a total surprise was the USTA Institute of Texan Cultures. This was built as the Texas pavilion at the 1968 HemisFair, the World’s Fair held in San Antonio. You could spend an entire day browsing through the exhibits which highlight all the many ethnic groups that have settled in Texas.

 

 

On A Mission…To See the Missions

San Antonio, a beautiful city with a huge history. When you think of San Antonio, many folks “Remember the Alamo!” The Alamo sits smack dab in the middle of the city, so it is easy to visit. When you think of the Alamo it is usually as a military site. If that is the only mission you visit, then you have missed the best. When you visit the other sites you feel the religious heritage. I feel a sense of sadness when I think of the Spaniards coming to spread Catholicism to the local natives. The culture and beliefs of the native people were ignored and eventually destroyed. What happens in the name of religion is often a sad history. But, it is part of our history.
Our friend Chris, who has wintered here for a few years, volunteered to take us to the missions. Four of the missions and other structures are a UNESCO World Heritage site as of 2015. The Alamo is not part of the site and is owned by the state of Texas. We visited on a Sunday and were treated to mariachi musicians warming up before playing at a mass at Mission Concepción, the best preserved of the missions. Catholic Mass is held every Sunday. Beautiful music!

San Jose “The Queen of the Missions”

Mission San Juan

Mission Espada