San Antonio, TX – Days 0,1,2

Frank and I went on a seven-day Texas Stars tour by Country Heritage Tours (America's Favorite Quilt Tour Company) from October 29 through November 7. The tour began in San Antonio early in the week and culminated in the annual Houston Quilt Festival at the end of the week. Several excursions were included to various quilt shops and quaint villages.

I organized descriptions of our travels semi-chronologically into three blog posts and partitioned them by focal interest: San Antonio sites, on the road visits, and fabric/quilts.

• WanderOrPonder: San Antonio (WoP this post)
  Days 0, 1, 2: Saturday, October 29 - Monday, November 1
  Arrival, The Alamo, San José Mission Pearl District, Riverwalk
  
  
• WanderOrPonder: On the Roads in Texas (WoP 11/18/2022 post)
  Days 3, 4: Tuesday, November 2 - Wednesday, November 3
  Quilt shops Creations in Kerrville, One Quilt Place in Fredericksburg, Quilted Skein in La Grange,Texas Quilt Museum in La Grange
  
  
• DianeLoves2Quilt: Houston Quilt Festival 2022 (DL2Q 11/19/2022 post)
  Days 5, 6, 7: Thursday, November 4 - Saturday, November 5
  Houston Quilt Festival and fabric purchases Days 5,6,7

Days 0, 1: Saturday, Sunday
The welcoming and orientation meeting for our tour was scheduled for Sunday evening. Our Southwest Airlines flight time options were such that we flew out a day early and did a bit of hotel and San Antonio exploration on our own on Sunday before the official start of the tour. We were staying at The Historic Menger Hotel for the first half of our trip. The historic 163 year old Menger Hotel reigns as the oldest continuously operating hotel west of the Mississippi. Some of the architecture and stained glass work is very impressive and worth visiting the previously cited link to see. The Menger is adjacent to the site of The Alamo. My first souvenir of the trip was a shirt I bought in the lobby. It was very popular with several ladies on the tour, and I think my wearing it the first day steered a fair amount of business to that store.

Since we had arrived at Halloween time and around Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), the hotel lobby sported very festive decorations. There was a table with entries from a pumpkin carving contest and several memorial displays with sugar skull accents. I shared a duet with the skeleton playing the grand piano.

Since Frank and I did not want to duplicate any attraction features on the tour, we did not visit the adjacent Alamo, our scheduled first stop Monday on our tour. Instead we took a Hop-on Hop-off Bus Tour. The red dot is where we hopped on, in front of the Menger hotel, labeled Stop 1 Alamo Plaza on the map. We did no hopping off and rode a full round trip to get a feel for the city. One strong impression is that San Antonio is doing a lot of road renovation and our route detoured a fair amount. We did cross the San Antonio River several times and got glimpses of the famed Riverwalk from above. We learned that the Riverwalk is the 14th most popular tourist attraction in the United States and San Antonio is the 7th largest city in the United States by population.

After our bus tour we walked part of the River Walk. Before our trip we had read about the genius of the architect Robert H. H. Hugman. His River Walk design solved a flood problem of the San Antonio River plus made it navigable. Based on his experience living in New Orleans and imbibing the Spanish heritage ambience there, Hugman made an extensive stretch of the river aesthetically pleasing. A short history is in this YouTube video, San Antonio River Walk A Tribute To Robert H H Hugman, "Father of the River Walk". 

Frank and I walked the stretch with the highest density of restaurants, represented by the blue dots on the following map. We ate dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, not a very adventuresome or locale-specific choice, but being Sunday we down-selected our eatery by short wait time since we were hungry! It was outdoors in lovely weather with a riverside view, so the Hard Rock Cafe was a thumbs-up pick. With our river cruise scheduled for the next day, we would see a larger stretch of the River Walk. We walked slowly back to our hotel and sat in on the welcome meeting, got our tour badges, our tour totes, and our hotel breakfast vouchers. We'd walked and lot and done a lot on our "day of rest". The official tour set out the next morning beginning with the Alamo. We'd tired ourselves out and so we vegged out the rest of the evening in our room.

Day 2: Monday
Texans look on The Alamo with great pride. With the deaths of 189 Texans, the battle at its site was significant because it rallied the rest of Texas to fight against the Mexican army, eventually leading to a victory over Santa Ana. I was underwhelmed when I saw the site. It is just a plaza since the fort itself had collapsed due to poor construction. Only a crumbling church, undergoing restoration, remained. Our local guide acknowledged the limited interest of our tour demographic (48 of us and Frank was the only male). Perhaps a bit sexist, but he said from experience that the women couldn't care less about the battles, but were more interested in the marriages, births, and mistresses. He claimed the men that died in the Battle of the Alamo were heroes but they surely were not saints. At the risk of offending Texans, I admit the Alamo was not at all a high point of this tour for me. I took a few token pictures to prove we'd been there. Frank is standing next a bronze statue of Davy Crocket, his childhood hero of coonskin cap and television show fame. When we crossed a pedestrian bridge over a small water canal, Frank joked that it must have been a moat and that the large koi swimming in there must really be piranha.

The next stop on our tour was Mission San José. Frank and I were a bit surprised since we mistakenly thought all the missions were in California. The inner courtyard seen in the first photo is huge and offered refuge for some Mexican Indians from other more aggressive Mexican Indian outside the walls. The trees are mesquite and the pods look like jumbo green beans. You can pop the pods right off the branch and eat them, or mash them into a fine powder to make flour, jelly, or even cocktails. They are gluten free.

Stone work and painted mosaic work inside and outside the church of the mission did decay due to inferior construction but it is being restored now. When the walls collapsed at one point, the tree of like at the far end of the Mission survived. Sunday Masses are held at this church today.

The bus then drove us to the Pearl District, so called because is the site of the once famous, but now defunct, Pearl Brewery. The Pearl Brewery was one of Texas's largest breweries, brewing one of Texas's iconic beers, Pearl Beer, from 1883 to 2001. We were let off to select our own lunching venue and browse in the reputed to be artisan shops. We found few shops to our liking, but uncovered other items of interest. The Culinary Institute of America (CIA-Texas) is in the Pearl District but we chose not to eat there. We could not have anyway since they only have reserve seatings Monday–Friday, 5–8 p.m. for a three- or four-course meal. The Culinary Institute of America has three other United States locations: two in the wine country of California and one along the Hudson River in New York. Instead of the CIA-Texas Frank and I chose to dine in the restaurant associated with the Hotel Emma, a hotel created from the refurbished brewery. It's lobby had incredibly interesting equipment to look at and wonder about.

I was amused that the skewers for Frank's chicken club sandwich displayed "Pearl" ornamentation in keeping with the theme of the area.

After our meal we explored places off the lobby - the library and the registration desk. Most likely it is hotel guests only who make use of those privileges.

Outside the lobby were more curiosities. This apparatus to hold firewood caught my eye; I suspect it was another piece of repurposed brewery equipment. The pattern of the tiled patio area was also unique; instead of the smaller gray diamonds being at the corners of the clay squares, they were inserted at the middles. It takes a skilled craftsman to cut out that notch without cracking the clay tile. I wandered off wondering how I would seam that if it were a quilt pattern.

In a nearby courtyard area was a display of four life size mannequins dress for Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). The first one, in blue and white, was my favorite; the butterfly came in a close second.

Our next stop was the River Walk Cruise. And yes, it is still Monday! Here is our party ready to board two boats. The design of the boats of the GO RIO Cruises company are elegantly patterned in the style  of Papel picado which means means “punched paper” and originated in Mexico by the Aztecs using a bark textile. Many Mexican restaurants are adorned with this artwork.

The various colored boats had different patterns. It was fun to notice the intricate designs on the sides –  swallows, suns, medallions, even an eagle.

The electric powered boats moved silently under many arches along the route. Some wide, shallow arches supported roadways and some more curvaceous, picturesque arches were for pedestrian traffic only from one river bank to the opposite bank.

Many businesses have entrances both from the streets above and at the level of the river. At the River Walk entrance to the Briscoe Western Art Museum we passed a sculpture titled Coming Home to the Briscoe. Per an article in My San Antonio, "The sculpture, which depicts longhorns thundering up the banks of the San Antonio River, driven by a wiry vaquero on horseback, is the work of artist T.D. Kelsey." It reminded me of some of the sculptures in the Oklahoma Land Rush Monument depicting the frenzied race to grab land in 1889.

We quietly cruised among super tall buildings of the city that reminded us that, the despite the greenery surrounding us, we were still in the heart of a city. We learned that no buildings were so tall as to ever cast a shadow on the revered Alamo. In contrast, but with a smooth transition, our route also took us past soothing, scenic waterfalls.

We were treated with gift cards by the tour company so we could select anywhere we wanted to dine. Frank and I ate a scrumptious Italian dinner at Paesanos Riverwalk, located at the tightest bend on the north side of the river.  Since the cards said San Antonio and bore the logo of Country Heritage Tours, I kept one as a souvenir – after I spent the cash off it, of course.

Yes, all this happened within one day in San Antonio. The next day the tour would go on some excursions to various quilt shops and villages north of the city.