Having out-of-town guests is fun for lots of reasons. But one that might not come to mind right away is the impetus to do touristy things in your own hometown. Thus the San Antonio riverboat tour I took with visitors from Maine last month.
We had perfect weather, as you can see...
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| Casa Rio's iconic umbrellas |
...and we enjoyed the many lovely sights San Antonio's downtown has to offer. Below you can see some of them. (Although there was none of the drama that accompanied my last float down this section of the river—yikes!—nine years ago. And we weren't paddling our own boat, as we often do further downstream.)
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| handsome sculpture outside the Briscoe Western Art Museum |
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| "Stargazer," an impressive new piece of public art |
When our kids were little and we'd be driving west from visiting Granny in Houston, there was always a fierce competition for who could glimpse the tower first as we neared home.
An even longer-standing claim-to-fame for us is our suite of missions. You can't see any of them from this section of the river, but when you pass the Arneson River Theatre, you see this lovely collection of bells that represent the five sites:
More cool public art:
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| "Torch of Friendship" |
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| the former Joske's storefront peeping over the wall |
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| funny faces on the Tower Life building |
It's also full of the prettiest tile- and stone-work inside. I'm pleased that it's on the way to becoming a hotel...it's in a perfect location and is just too lovely to be an office building.
And to finish up, we have some more public art, with our own Nix in the frame for scale. This mural is across from the convention center, which has its own branch of the river, and where we walked after our cruise:
For those of my readers who've made it through to the end of this post, I have a slight teaser. Next up I'll be showing-and-telling about a *slightly* bigger and more famous river that I floated on soon after this trip. Stay tuned!
