Travel - Visiting San Antonio, Texas, Home of the Alamo and Riverwalk

San Antonio, Texas is a nice getaway for a long weekend and has plenty of history, culture, and delicious southwestern cuisine to offer. My wife and I stayed at a hotel on the Riverwalk, a shopping, convention, and tourism district along the San Antonio " River". Most folks would consider the river to be a canal because as you can see from the pictures, it flows inside concrete and stone embankments. We happened to arrive on St. Patrick's Day weekend, so there were lots of tourists there celebrating the holiday.

It's a pretty good place for walking and biking if you are up for it. There are paved paths on both sides of the river which can take you to the historic missions if you want to bike for a few miles or just to restaurants and shopping if you want to stay closer to downtown.

The historic Alamo fort is a short walk from the Riverwalk and a must see while in town.

To escape the crowds, we walked out to the historic King William District, which has many historic mansions built in the late 1800s, with some of them open for tours.

We also took a cab out of downtown to get to the San Antonio Museum of Art, which has a wonderful collection of modern art housed in the renovated Lone Star Beer Brewery. The old hop house (pictured below)from the brewery has been repurposed as classroom space for the museum.

After the museum, we visited the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, which were on the same side of town as the museum. We also saw on the map nearby a place called the Japanese Tea Garden, so we decided to check it out as well. It was an old limestone quarry that was repurposed as a garden.

As you can see on the entrance it is also known as the Chinese Tea Garden. Seems like the park planners couldn't make up their mind.

It was an interesting concept, but not much was blooming while we were there and it was pretty bleak. The stone work was the most interesting part, but the water features didn't look very natural.

The city has lots to offer for the conventioneer or weekend visitor, but I'll probably skip the Japanese/Chinese Tea Garden on the next trip.