...apart from the historic monuments. Having arrived in San Antonio, TX at a bleary-eyed 3am on the 30th, we took a taxi straight to our hotel and slept like logs. The next morning we rose early to see the famous Alamo fort in central San Antonio. We were rather disappointed. It is essentially a walled garden, with two squat stone buildings inside. One houses a room full of flags, and the other is a gift shop disguised as a museum. Needless to say, the gift shop is bigger than the 'historical flag' building. The whole site takes all of about 10 minutes to see. We took the obligatory photo outside the front gate, and felt rather underwhelmed. Maybe it's because one of us is Greek and the other is British, and we're used to routinely seeing much larger and older historical sites!
The other big draw in San Antonio is a real estate project called the Riverwalk, which sits in the middle of the Central Business District. It is essentially a human-made river system which runs about four meters below street level, past rows of cafes and restaurants, through open-plan buildings, and even through a mall. It has to be said, it is quite beautiful. It tries to channel places like Venice, and certainly has a somewhat Mediterranean feel to it. This is strange, given it is situated in the middle of heartland Texas.
If any of you happen to be driving through San Antonio, definitely stay for the day. The Alamo is free to see, and a walk along the Riverwalk is certainly pleasant (although that's where MaryAnn's camera broke!). There are loads of restaurants and cafes, so that would definitely make for a nice evening for those not on a student budget. Other than that, there wasn't much else to see, or many bars or places to go out. There are missions, but you need a car. For all we know San Antonio has a raging nightlife on the outskirts of the city, but from our experience there wasn't much catering to the younger, collegiate crowd. This could be because there isn't a strong university presence in the city. So all in all, San Antonio makes a great day trip for you tourists, but we wouldn't recommend staying for much longer.
Oh, and for one other reason. Being in Texas, the city has some mighty fine Texas BBQ joints and Mexican restaurants. Being the USA, and being Texas, the portions are huge; also expect to have a (complimentary) huge cup of (very) sweet iced tea with every meal. If you are a fan of your teeth, however, ask for unsweetened. On our last day, 2nd July, we went to a small Mexican restaurant called the Oasis Cafe. Their food is fantastic. If you're ever in San Antonio, look it up and check it out. It is very reasonably priced, and close to the city centre. More likely than not you'll have some leftovers to take home with you as well. We got cheese enchiladas, which were fantastic.
Real Texan souvenirsOn the 2nd of July we hopped on the train to Tucson, AZ. It's a shame that we got a new camera after this leg of the train journey, as we passed by some fantastic scenery. Probably our best yet, if we're being honest. Isolated ranches, cowboys and ranchers with wide-brimmed white hats, and the endless Southwestern desert.. it was beautiful. Yes, we saw cacti and tumbleweed! Apparently, you can tell the social class of a rancher by the hat he wears and the type of cowboy boots he owns. The middle-class rancher, with a decent-sized ranch, usually owns a black hat. The really well-to-do ranchers (and by well-to-do they can own up to tens of thousands of acres of land) have the white hat as their hat if choice, with the 'X's' on the back denoting value (the more X's the more expensive it is, and they can run pretty damn expensive). There's also something about the length of the brim and the crease on the top. We don't know much about how you can tell a 'good' pair of cowboy boots from 'cheap', and tbh we're pretty clueless about the hats as well, but they can be quite extortionate. Note: as we were updating our blog on the iPad (we're in our hotel lobby in Tucson), a rancher with a white hat came up to us to joke about how much faster we type on our iPad than he does on his. Haha!
One particularly interesting view we saw was just passing El Paso, Texas. For those of our friends who don't know where this is, it's basically right on the border between the states and Mexico, with Juarez, Mexico right on the other side of the Rio Grande. We probably passed 7 US Border Patrol vans in the 5 min span we were going through El Paso. We weren't really surprised by this: Juarez is infamous as one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico, called "the most violent zone In the world outside of declared war zones." Thousands of people have died from the drug cartel violence and homicides in the city and even on US soil (from gunmen shooting from behind the fence) to the point where businesses in the city pleaded for UN intervention. You always hear about it in American news, but it's another thing to actually pass by the slums crowded right next to the border.
Juarez slums near the border, photo not our own
We're just finishing up our stay in Tucson, AZ: getting a burger from Lindy's and walking around the historic district downtown. More to follow in our next entry, peace!
The Alamo..
The other big draw in San Antonio is a real estate project called the Riverwalk, which sits in the middle of the Central Business District. It is essentially a human-made river system which runs about four meters below street level, past rows of cafes and restaurants, through open-plan buildings, and even through a mall. It has to be said, it is quite beautiful. It tries to channel places like Venice, and certainly has a somewhat Mediterranean feel to it. This is strange, given it is situated in the middle of heartland Texas.
Oh, and for one other reason. Being in Texas, the city has some mighty fine Texas BBQ joints and Mexican restaurants. Being the USA, and being Texas, the portions are huge; also expect to have a (complimentary) huge cup of (very) sweet iced tea with every meal. If you are a fan of your teeth, however, ask for unsweetened. On our last day, 2nd July, we went to a small Mexican restaurant called the Oasis Cafe. Their food is fantastic. If you're ever in San Antonio, look it up and check it out. It is very reasonably priced, and close to the city centre. More likely than not you'll have some leftovers to take home with you as well. We got cheese enchiladas, which were fantastic.
Real Texan souvenirs
One particularly interesting view we saw was just passing El Paso, Texas. For those of our friends who don't know where this is, it's basically right on the border between the states and Mexico, with Juarez, Mexico right on the other side of the Rio Grande. We probably passed 7 US Border Patrol vans in the 5 min span we were going through El Paso. We weren't really surprised by this: Juarez is infamous as one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico, called "the most violent zone In the world outside of declared war zones." Thousands of people have died from the drug cartel violence and homicides in the city and even on US soil (from gunmen shooting from behind the fence) to the point where businesses in the city pleaded for UN intervention. You always hear about it in American news, but it's another thing to actually pass by the slums crowded right next to the border.
Juarez slums near the border, photo not our own
You can definitely understand on the one hand how the two cities' proximity and the presence of drug gangs has caused a lot of tension, and on the other why Mexican families are so desperate to hop the border to escape abject poverty and crime. And it'll continue to be an issue, until lawmakers on both sides work better together and perhaps create more efficient citizenship pathways for those families who are well-intentioned and want a better future for themselves and their children.
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