First of two rivers

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...

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.) 

handsome sculpture outside the Briscoe Western Art Museum

"Stargazer," an impressive new piece of public art

The Tower of the Americas, a vestige of the city's 1968 Hemisfair, can be seen from all over town, but is especially impressive when seen from the river. 

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:

"Torch of Friendship"

...and architecture...

the former Joske's storefront peeping over the wall

funny faces on the Tower Life building

This is the former Nix hospital and medical office building where I used to go to the dentist. Yes, it is a building and not just a wall, although from this vantage point the latter's what it looks like. It just comes to a perfect triangular point. 

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!

Wordless Wednesday: Is it Christmas already?!?

 

Orchid Week!

Nero Wolfe had nothing on the San Antonio Botanical Garden when it comes to orchids. I know almost all of my recent posts have been from this wonderful place, but what can I say? I'm emphasizing the "hometown" in my title and not doing much traveling lately, but I'm hoping that will change later in the spring.

The great thing about having the SABOT membership, though, is that visiting there is almost always like going someplace new. The roses are all sleeping now, but the place makes up for that with incredible orchid displays. (Can you believe that arrangement at the top of the post?! I should have had someone stand in the frame for scale, but, trust me, it was 5 feet wide!) And they're working on new exhibits all the time.

I took advantage of my membership to go on a special orchid tour the other day, and it was such fun, as well as educational. I'm sure everyone on the tour knew more about orchids than I did, but that just meant I got to learn more new stuff from our expert guide than they did. For example, did you know that the vanilla called for in all your sweet baking comes from an orchid family plant? That was news to me.

Here's a couple more shots of the lovelies we got to see. (I can't believe I didn't think to take my camera, so all I had was my phone. That's why there's just these few pictures instead of 20 or 30!)

A special treat was getting to go behind the scenes at SABOT and spend some time in the orchid greenhouse with one of the horticulturists. I couldn't help but think of the detective's rooms and half-expected to see his ample frame puttering around the pots...

Wordless Wednesday: netted moon

 

Night and Day*

Much as I would like to visit distant planets more than just in my imagination, the pictures here were not taken in a galaxy far, far away...even as it might look like it. No, it's in a location familiar to you, my faithful readers: just our local Botanical Garden. But, a Garden transformed.

A couple of weeks ago I took one of my now frequent strolls around this wonderful place, making note of some special installations. Then, just a few nights ago, Henry and I got to appreciate the purposes of that hardware, as we attended a Lightscape tour of the place. I thought it would be fun to show you some of the sights from both perspectives. (My little camera doesn't do super-well in low light, but some of these shots turned out better than I had expected.)

Here's the Garden's lovely lake, a peaceful oasis with a nice walking trail around it, during regular business hours...

...and here it is, transformed by laser light...

This array of colorful strings was arresting enough in daylight...

...but with clever lights applied, it became quite magical...

I was curious about this display during my morning walk...

...never guessing what it would become after dark...

You can look down upon this area from a raised walkway, which I often like to do on my walks...

But the view was totally transformed by the Lightscape folks:

A quirky display that I was particularly taken with on my daylight walk was this collection of plastic waste made into art:

I didn't realize at the time that it was part of the Lightscape, too. But it would be eye-catching on its own, as you can see in this closeup:

isn't it clever?

But, yes, it does light up!

The glass-walled conservatories, which you can see in the background of some of my photos (and which I wrote about, 'way back in 2015!), are pretty impressive all the time, but with the shifting colors of light, they really look spectacular...

Perhaps our favorite display was one that I read in our paper was especially designed for our Lightscape show. I saw the setup during my morning walk, thought it looked impressive, and wondered how it would be transformed...

Wow! Was it ever transformed! A field of flickering bluebonnets! We stayed there quite a while, admiring the artistry, and this was my best photo:

Another big, spectacular display was this one, covering all of a large, grassy hill. Unfortunately, I don't have a daytime shot to compare it with, but it was an amazing light/music show, coordinated with color-morphing floodlights on the gazebo at the top of the hill:

The show's "finale" is the archway that appears in most of the ads for the experience. Here's the way it looks in the daylight:

And here it is, all lit up, from the side and from within:

It was a great way to really turbo-charge the holiday season for us. We hope yours is just as spectacular!

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*Sorry for the Cole Porter earworm!

Wordless Wednesday: the ants go marching two by two...

 

Wordless Wednesday: run for your lives! it's the Protomolecule!