Texas - The Lone Star State
Archers Holidays, June 2014
Today was a 7.30am/8.30am day. Before that we had our included breakfast. Oatmeal (way better than yesterday) with brown sugar, breakfast potatoes, sausage, eggs, biscuits, peppered gravy, cereals, toast, bagels, fruit juice, coffee and soft drinks. Wow.
We got on the road at 8.30am for our journey to San Antonio. Patrick put on a movie about the Missions, followed by one about the Alamo. The latter was more interesting, to me anyway.
When we reached San Antonio, we picked up a guide for the morning - her name was Terry and she would accompany us throughout. On the way to the Mission, she told us about the history of the City, trouble was everything she pointed out was on the opposite side of the bus to where we were sitting!
We arrived at Mission San Jose.
This was one of five Spanish Missions (including the Alamo) that were installed by Spain in an attempt to gain a foothold. In doing that, they hoped to gain control over the native people.
Terry gave us an orientation of the Mission in front of this layout.
We visited a round room at the corner of the wall, where guns could be used in many directions to help defend the mission.
They have a couple of small houses in which you can see how tiny they were. Native American families lived in here. Outside the buildings were communal ovens, kept outside because of the heat in Texas.
We crossed to the alcoved part where the priests would have been found.
The architecture of these old places always amazes me, when they can't even build a house with a straight line in these days!
This is the Convento, providing housing for missionaries and lay assistants. In 1785, there were nine rooms downstairs and five upstairs. The ruins we saw today were part of a reconstruction started by monks in 1861, but it was never completed.
We approached the church - it has a very ornate window in the side wall and a bell tower. This is now known as the Rose Window, though no one is sure why.
There was a round building in which a spiral staircase was contained, but it's gated off so we couldn't go and take a look. In places we could see artwork on the walls where they have uncovered paintings (below right).
We headed inside the Catholic Church to take a look. The Church was central to the mission community, the bells sounding for various activities throughout the day - fast, feast, work or prayer. In the 1870s, the dome and roof collapsed resulting in repairs and major reconstruction occurred in the 1920s and 1930s.
Across from the church, we entered the Granary. This was reconstructed in 1933 but is sadly no longer in operation! Further along we came to a building with an awning with a very unusual decoration - cacti! Wouldn't want to fall on that! There were some more houses along this edge of the Mission.
In the early years of the mission, Indians lived in small detached houses called jacales - there were eighty-four of these present in 1755! However, after 1768, as conflicts with the Apaches and Comanches increased, the mission was enclosed and they moved into houses built along the walls, like those present today.
The mission contains a small museum of artefacts from the site. The large key (below left) used to lock the mission gates. Below centre is one of the lances with which the Spanish protected their Presidios - early outposts to defend their territory. The map shows the location of the five missions.
There's also a shop (big surprise!) They have a couple of Ranger uniforms, but they were too big for me. This, little guy, on the other paw, could've become my own bearsonal Park Ranger, but didn't. We figured he could be of more use to the less-travelled bear. Colin, thought he'd enter into the Spanish spirit with this marvellous sombrero. Not sure it suits!
We returned to the bus and Terry took us on a brief guided tour of San Antonio. These two hotels, below left and centre are both in the Guinness Book of Records. The first - the Fairmount Hotel made history when it became the largest ever moved on wheels. In 1984, the hotel was threatened with demolition, to make way for retail and residential space. Instead, the city of San Antonio decided to spend $1 million to lift the entire building onto rollers and move it five blocks to its present location. It made the 1986 record book.
The second (below centre) is the Palacio del Rio. While the first four stories were standard construction with reinforced concrete, the remaining floors were stacked pre-cast modules made of light-weight structural concrete. Each room was decorated, including TV, radio, bed, coffee maker and more, before they even arrived at the construction site. Each weighed 35 tons, and were manufactured eight miles away from the site. The whole building from design, construction, completion and occupation took 202 working days!
The Torch of Friendship is the tower below right. It was presented by the Mexican Government to the city of San Antonio as a Beacon of US-Mexican ties.
We passed a Vietnam War Memorial, the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts and a great lion mural.
Our final stop of our tour with Terry was at the San Fernando Cathedral. We headed inside. The ceilings are really high and the interior is amazing.
Terry told us a little bit about it, then gave us a few minutes to explore on our own.
In a lobby, they have the remains of those present at The Alamo - "Here lies the remains of Travis Crockett Bowie and other Alamo Heroes". The memorial was erected in 1938.
Tour over, we said goodbye to Terry and Patrick told us we had ninety minutes for lunch in the El Mercado Market Square area of San Antonio. Well, it was pretty disappointing. There was a full-service restaurant, but the line was out the door. Patrick had advised us to avoid the street vendors, which made choices pretty limited! However, I did find this guy! And he was almost MY size. Eeee-haaaaaaa!!!!!
I did - eventually - manage to find an ice cream, which wasn't bad, though melting quickly in the heat. Soon, it was time to return to the bus to take us to our hotel.
We stayed at another Drury's Inn in San Antonio. The hotel had lovely rooms, with ceiling fans, two beds, armchair, television, microwave, fridge, a really large bathroom (with no lock again!), plenty of towels, toiletries in dispensers on the wall. Overall, it was very nicely decorated.
We were off to The Alamo later, so we didn't bother going out to find something to eat, not least because Drury's have their Kickbacks option. We had hot dogs, baked potatoes, nachos and mac 'n' cheese - and our three cocktails of course!
I also grabbed some popcorn for later - a bear like me often gets hungry during the night after all!
Shortly after dinner it was time to meet the bus for the short ride down to The Alamo. As is my way, I dropped a Ted as there were no photographs permitted inside. Boooooo!! Why the heck not? I don't believe it would stop people visiting. We were taken inside where our guide told us about the architecture and history of the place. Funny cos I know little of this part of history - knew about the Bowie knife and Davy Crockett in his racoon hat but that about covered it.
The guide was very enthusiastic and knew his stuff, we saw a model of the site, some paintings on the wall - there's not a lot inside. Once we got outside, we were able to take photographs of the building and the gardens. Then, we headed over to the alcoved area (below right). In here, there were a few more exhibits and our guide talked us through these too.
Night was falling as we exited this part of the exhibition. By this time the tour was over and we had a few minutes to wander about. Unfortunately, the gift shop was closed at this time of night - almost 9pm - which I thought was a bit short-sighted of them, particularly as the shop is within the grounds, behind a gate with a big security man on guard. Oh well.
There was just time for a few more moonlight pictures of the outside of the building before we piled back onto the bus and returned to the hotel for the night.
At least I had my popcorn to look forward to as I watched telly and tweeted for a while.