I opened my 2019 travel season with San Antonio, on the second weekend of the year. The day I flew down was grey and drizzly, and I spent it indoors as much as I could, visiting the Witte Museum, the McNay Art Gallery (which I loved) and the San Antonio Museum of Art. Saturday was bright and beautiful and I whizzed around the city, starting with a long walk in the core. Though I walked most of the RiverWalk, it was early and almost devoid of people, and in general, attractions were easy to get into at this low-travel time of the year. San Antonio was perhaps prettier than expected, you have to give them credit for making the best of their little river, which starts just 10km out of the city.
Photo List (Total 339 Photos)
Click bolded headers below to view, or click "just the best" for quick tour
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Central San Antonio (144 photos) - This is the central city, in a somewhat haphazard order. It starts at Main Plaza early in the morning, and covers some of the city's taller and historical buildings around this area. It veers over to the Alamo and the plaza outside. A late day visit to the market comes next, followed by an excursion to the Hays Street Bridge, separated from the downtown by a freeway. After that, there's photos of the River Walk when it was fairly quiet in the morning, then up the Tower of the Americas for views, and back to my hotel via the King William Historical District.
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North of Downtown (58 photos) - This gallery documents three separate visits that are all just a bit north of the downtown area. On my first day in San Antonio I had a hamburger at an open-air place called the Luxury before touring the San Antonio Museum of Art. On my second day I walked around the area near the Central Library and the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts. Before catching my flight home I visited the very beautiful repurposed industrial buildings that form the core of the Pearl District. All three visits brought me to new sections of the San Antonio River.
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North End (88 photos) - This is where I started my exploration of the city on drizzly Friday. It begins at the Witte Museum, a history museum for the area alongside the San Antonio River, with a few heritage buildings relocated to its courtyard. I tried to find the Japanese Garden in nearby Brackenridge Park to no avail. It continues with the McNay Art Museum, a hacienda-type estate donated to the city, with recent extensions, featuring mostly modern art. The gallery also includes my visit to the Botanical Garden on sunny Saturday with it's very interesting greenhouses.
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South End (25 photos) - I did not spend a lot of time in the south end of the city. I did visit Confluence Park because I had read about some pavilions there on an architecture website, and I visited the Mission Concepción and the MIssion San Jos. Though these were quite beautiful, once you had seen them there wasn't a terrific amount to do about it. I also took a few photos of commercial buildings.
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West End (24 photos) - I was drawn to the west side of the city by the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, which turned out to be a performance space rather than a gallery, but worth seeing the exterior anyways. It gave me the opportunity to drive around this heavily latino section of the city. I was taken with the colourful buildings along Zarzamora with their hand-painted signs. I also droped by a Basilica and a park surrounding a lake.
