Dear Saint Anthony, please look around…

Growing up in a devout Catholic family, I was taught to ask the saints for help. Those days are long gone, but this post’s title began a little ‘prayer’ my mom taught me when I couldn’t find something. Saint Anthony, the patron saint for the recovery of lost items, is the namesake for Texas’ second largest city, San Antonio. Our visit was a mixed experience. We didn’t love it, but perhaps we did recover something here … and we had to go deep to find it.

As we sit in our respective evening places, me on the couch and Tami in the lounge chair, recovering from another spectacular meal, I jot down another few lines about San Antonio … our last stay prior to where we are now.  So far our ‘camping’ has been pretty easy to write about, but this one not so much. Did we like it or not? Hmmm … maybe.  🤣 There are likely a number of reasons we didn’t and I’m not sure if I’ve even completely figured out what makes this one more difficult, but as I’m reflecting I think it may be that we are just not city people, so I feel my review may be unfair. But then again – this is our blog and our experience and I doubt it has any influence whatsoever, so I don’t expect to hear from the SA department of tourism after posting this.  San Antonio was one of the destinations I was really looking forward to, but in the end it didn’t live up to expectations.  I suppose it didn’t dawn on me that being the 7th largest city in the US, and one of the top tourist destinations in our country as well, that over the holidays I should have expected thousands of tourists in the city – like ourselves!  And it’s not even that we didn’t enjoy our stay, (and we don’t expect to love every place), but being there during a super busy tourist time combined with what we’re comfortable with and like to do, didn’t pan out as a great experience.  And I guess that’s fine.  There are places we will want to experience again, and those we won’t.  This is one of the latter. 

Booking places around the holidays was a bit of a chore, but I was able to get what I thought would be a wonderful location on the east side of San Antonio, spanning a few days before Christmas until after the new year. It was only a few miles from the River Walk – one of the things SA is most famous for and something we really wanted to see.  The park where we stayed turned out to be average, although a walking / biking path that extended miles in each direction goes directly through it so I knew we would get some exercise and have a great place to walk the dogs.  They also serve fresh pizza and wings on sight – delivered right to your rig.  A great way to make sure the walks didn’t do us too much good!

As it was close by and we thought we’d probably go more than once, our first big destination was the River Walk.  Driving through the neighborhoods on the way there offered a taste of the city with views of run-down homes with bars on the windows and doors, lack of any upkeep and a general feeling of neglect.  But also the Spur’s stadium was almost around the corner and a lot of money has gone into that.  Typical urban juxtaposition. 

After considerable time driving around town to find a parking spot, we landed one that had a two-hour limit and we ended up having to come back later and move to a garage.  But just as the name implies, the River Walk is a path through downtown with a waterway along side.  It’s very similar to the canals in Las Vegas at the Venetian, only this is an actual river with brown water.  Shops and restaurants line the walkway, and out-of-towner’s point themselves out by lining up for the big boat tour.  Our skipper (yep, we’re in that group) gave us some history of SA, pointed out interesting architecture along the way, and talked about a Sandra Bullock movie that was filmed there.  We had lunch at a Tex-Mex place and enjoyed our view of the river and 500 people sitting in front of us.  Our insanely expensive lunch was quite delicious though.  Reading this may sound like we didn’t enjoy it, but we actually really did.  The River Walk is a must-see part of San Antonio.

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A couple days later we headed to the Alamo which is in the same area as the River Walk.  This may have been the biggest let-down of this stay.  The Alamo mission church itself has been mostly preserved, but it was once a larger compound consisting of several buildings and a walled fortress where the famous battle occurred in 1836.  Where much of that compound was, now you’ll see a building that houses a Ripley’s Believe It or Not, a couple of amusement rides, some kind of 3-D movie, and a wax ‘museum’.  Sad and out of place.  The massive line to get into the mission prevented us from going in, but I did get some pictures of the outside, and even the back.  I thought my picture of the back of the Alamo would be fairly unique, but Googling ‘Back of the Alamo’, serves up several pictures of the exact same thing.  It’s so hard to provide a fresh perspective on anything these days! Undaunted, I also got a pic of the side of the Alamo!  Sorry Google! I just wish San Antonio would have preserved more of the area and kept it from becoming a blatant tourist trap.  At least Phil Collins had the right idea in preserving many of the artifacts and even donating them to the museum.

After making our way through the crowds around the outside of the Alamo, we looked for a place to eat and ended up at the River Walk again.  We found a mediocre Mexican restaurant where the wait staff was definitely tired of all the tourists.  Ho Ho Ho and a Happy bleeping New Year to you!

I mentioned the walking path leading through the park where we stayed.  This is a very nice two-lane paved path for bikes and pedestrians.  At this time of year though (at least I think this is the reason), it is mostly deserted giving us non-city folk a bit of an eerie feeling walking it.  It’s wooded with a small stream running through.  The greenway would be very beautiful if it weren’t for all the garbage in the creek and trees along the banks.  At first I started taking pictures trying to leave out the bad stuff, but this diary should be about what we actually see along the way as opposed to only the best of, so I stopped doing that now.  The fact that there are several shootings in SA if not every day, then close to it, and reading about a couple held up at gunpoint on a similar trail, just gave us pause when walking here.  It didn’t stop us, but we weren’t exactly super comfortable either.  Again, this is probably more due to us not being used to life in the big city. With such a high population, there will be crime, but the odds of it happening to any one single person are likely very low.  It’s like the lottery – someone will win.  Probably not you.  I also should point out that SA is much cleaner than the dump that Seattle has become.  Downtown was not covered in graffiti, there wasn’t a lot of garbage in town, we didn’t see any tent cities, and we felt relatively safe there.  There were plenty of crazies loving their obvious drug-induced experience, but that was more interesting than threatening.

The littler problem that we’ve noticed throughout the south so far though does really bother me.  It’s all along the highways and rural streets.  I have my own opinion as to why this has become an issue, but whatever the reason is, it’s from PEOPLE.  People should do better.  It seems like we used to.  Maybe it’s just me, but it seems that no matter what your living conditions are, you would care about your environment.  It’s sad that the statement displayed in such bold text here is that a lot of POEPLE just don’t.  

In case I’ve depressed some of you by our less than stellar SA review, I wanted to end with a highlight.  Thanks to a friend of mine who lives just outside San Antonio in New Braunsfels, (dont’t say ‘fells’, say ‘fulls’), we visited the Natural Bridge Caverns about a half hour Northeast of San Antonio.  We’ve done other cave tours before, but this was by far the best.  In roughly a 1 hour walking tour, you descend over 200 feet below ground into caverns ever increasing in size.  All of the geological formations you’d expect to see in a cave system are present, including the underground water system that helped create them.  This cave system wasn’t even discovered until 1960 when a couple of college kids asked for permission to explore the area.  On their fourth expedition they discovered the first section of what is a 2-mile cave system and thanks to grant money is now one of the best cave tours in the US. The last and largest cavern is about the size of a football field and it took some time to discover just how large it was as the helmet lights couldn’t even find the other side.  If you visit San Antonio, spend a few hours at the River Walk, and head to the caverns for a truly amazing experience.  Thank you Ryan!

Walking into one of the largest caverns with crystal clear water at the bottom, surrounded by massive geological formations thousands of years in the making that wouldn’t even be there at all if the whole area hadn’t been under an ocean at one point, I could feel the water forming in my eyes, and looking at Tami I knew she was feeling the same thing. Whether divine inspiration or not, on that tour we recovered a bit of that sense of awe that this planet can provide if we look for it. And we should look for these experiences as they can change your perspective, even if only for a short time.

That’s all I’ve got this for this time.  Whereas San Antonio isn’t a place we need to visit again, we’re glad we did stop here.  And one thing I forgot to mention … Texans LOVE their fireworks.  Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and leading up to New Year’s Eve there were fireworks every evening, and some throughout the day.  But holy cow, we had no idea what was in store.  I’ve always said that Bellingham sounds like a war zone on July 4.  Well let me tell you … it is nothing like San Antonio on New Year’s Eve.  If you like the sound of explosions, head to San Antonio on Dec 31 for a continuous bomb-fest the likes of which has not been rivaled since the Mexican army attacked the Alamo.  We’ve honestly never heard anything like it.  Luckily our dogs didn’t mind too much and the crackle of pyrotechnics and earth shaking explosives knocked off within a reasonable time after the strike of midnight.  WOW – those San Antonians (and I’m assuming Texan’s in general) sure know how to celebrate.  Everything’s bigger in Texas!  Happy New Year! -G&T

Again, for those who made it to the end, thanks for reading, and here’s a little excerpt reel of life in the ArrrVVV!