Texas_2

SAN ANTONIO
To View Other Travel Logs And Photos
San Antonio, Texas 

	We had to catch a plane out of San Antonio for Lydia’s wedding to John in Sonoma County, California, so we decided to spend a few days there.  First stop was the Alamo, which is surprisingly small, and right in the heart of the city, but obviously holds impressive lore.  In short (if you are interested in the longer version, there is a great Imax movie around the corner from the Alamo which tells the entire story), the Alamo was originally a mission, the Mission San Antonio de Valero, established in 1718 by friars, Native Americans and early settlers.  In 1793, Spanish officials secularized San Antonio's five missions.  They distributed the missions’ lands to the remaining Native American residents.

	In the early1800s, the Spanish used the former mission, which they called the Alamo, to house a Spanish cavalry unit.  The commander of this unit established the first recorded hospital in Texas in the Long Barrack.  Subsequently, the Spanish military, Texas revolutionaries, and the Mexican military occupied the Alamo at various points in time throughout Texas’ 10 year struggle for independence, and ultimately, the Alamo became the “cradle of Texas Liberty.”  

In December, 1835, Texas revolutionaries struggling for independence from Mexico, forced Mexican troops to surrender the city of San Antonio; they then moved to occupy the Alamo, which had been fortified by the prior military occupants.  On February 23, 1836, General Santa Anna arrived unexpectedly.  Having just declared independence from Mexico, a rag tag group of Texans and Tejanos, most famously led by Tennessee Congressman and famed frontiersman Davey Crocket, as well as Jim Bowie, a notorious knife fighter defied Santa Ana’s invading army, and held out for 13 days against it.  Unfortunately, there is no Hollywood ending here.   They lost (and died to the last man) but their courage inspired others to fight to protect their freedom and maintain Texas’ independence; Santa Ana was captured and surrendered just over a month later near Houston.  Today, the Alamo represents a place where men made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom, as well as “Mexico’s Shrine of Liberty.”   

	As for the city, San Antonio is a beautiful collection of hotels, art galleries, shopping, and restaurants, generally centered on a downtown river walk.  There is also a historic trail of missions, just a few miles outside of downtown, which obviously played a role in Texas’ history.  We stayed at the historic St. Anthony Hotel (it is on the Department of Interior’s National Register of Historic Places) smack dab in the middle of downtown, and watched John Edwards whip Cheney in the Vice Presidential debate.  Alright, maybe he didn’t whip him, but it was enough to hold the line after the whipping Kerry gave Bush the week before.
TRAVEL LOG FOR US
TEXAS
To view photos of
San Antonio
To Continue To Read The US Travel Logs & View Photos