Twenty-Four Hours in San Antonio

There are cities a man can enter and leave without carrying much of them away, cities whose streets, buildings, restaurants, and monuments become no more than names attached to an old journey, and then there are cities that remain long after the road has carried you somewhere else, cities that return to you in odd moments when you are far away, when you remember the turn of a street or the sound of water beneath a bridge or the way evening came down upon a certain place. San Antonio is that kind of city for me. Give me twenty-four hours there and I know where I would go, where I would eat, where I would walk when the heat of the day began to loosen, and where I would want to be when the last light had gone from the sky.

I would begin before seven in the morning, when downtown was still coming awake and the River Walk had yet to fill with the thousands who would claim it later in the day. I would park near the river and walk down toward the water, glad for those first hours when a city belongs to itself. The restaurants would be closed, the tables empty, the streets only beginning to stir, and the river would move beneath the bridges as though it had been moving there long before anyone thought of building a city around it and would continue long after another generation had taken our place. I would walk beside it without much concern for where I was going. There are mornings when a person needs no destination.

San Antonio is a city that seems to reveal itself slowly when you walk. The old buildings stand beside the new ones, Spanish colonial architecture gives way to modern towers, courtyards appear behind streets filled with traffic, and everywhere there are reminders that the city has been gathering lives for centuries. You can cross a few blocks and feel as though you have passed through several different periods of history. That is one of the things I have always liked about San Antonio. The past here has never been completely pushed aside to make room for the present. It remains among us.

After breakfast, I would make my way toward the Alamo. I have seen enough historic places to know that the first impression can sometimes be deceiving. A place can become so famous that the story surrounding it grows larger than the place itself. The Alamo has that kind of fame. People come from all over the country knowing the name before they ever see the building, knowing the battle, knowing the men who died there, knowing the words that have been repeated for generations. Yet when you stand there, you realize that this famous piece of American history is surrounded by a living city. Cars pass nearby. People hurry down the sidewalks. Workers begin their day. Visitors stand taking photographs. The ordinary world continues around a place that has carried an extraordinary story.

I would walk the grounds slowly, thinking about the people who had stood there when none of them could have known what the place would eventually mean. That is what interests me most about history. We know what came afterward. They did not. For them, it was a place where they lived, worked, prayed, argued, hoped, feared, and finally fought. The distance between their lives and ours can seem enormous until you stand where they stood.

By late morning I would leave downtown and head south toward Mission San José, because if you stay only around the Alamo and the River Walk, you see only one part of San Antonio. The city's history reaches much farther along the river, and at Mission San José the story opens into another century, another world, another San Antonio.

I would spend the late morning walking through the mission grounds, looking at the church, the old living quarters, the convento, and the walls that have survived generations of weather and change. If the timing were right, I would join one of the ranger led walks and listen to the story of the mission before wandering through the grounds on my own. There is something different about seeing an old building after you have heard who lived there and what their lives were like. A wall becomes more than a wall. A doorway becomes the entrance to a life that existed centuries before your own.

Standing there, I would think about how many people have called this place home. Long before today's hotels, restaurants, traffic, and towers, there were communities along this river building lives of their own. The city did not begin with the things we recognize today. It grew slowly, layer upon layer, and some of those earlier lives remain visible if you know where to look.

By noon, history would have made me hungry, and I would head back toward downtown for lunch. I would want Mexican food or Tex-Mex because San Antonio and those flavors seem to belong to one another. I would choose a restaurant filled with people rather than a place chosen because some guide told me it was fashionable. I would want families at nearby tables, workers stopping for lunch, visitors talking about what they had seen, and people who had lived in San Antonio long enough to order their meal without looking at the menu.

I would eat slowly. A day like this should have room for lunch. Too many travelers make the mistake of believing that the purpose of a day in a city is to see as much as possible. I have never understood that. A city is not a collection of things to check off. Sometimes the hour spent sitting over a meal tells you more than another monument ever could.

After lunch I would walk through Historic Market Square. I would wander among the shops and stalls, looking at handmade goods and listening to the voices around me. Market Square has a character that comes from the people who have made it part of their lives, and I would rather spend time there than hurry through another attraction. I would probably find something I had never intended to buy and take it home anyway. That is one of the small pleasures of traveling. You leave home thinking you know what you want, and a place has a way of changing your mind.

By the middle of the afternoon, I would head back toward the river and follow the Museum Reach north toward Pearl. The farther you go from the center of downtown, the more the River Walk changes. The crowds begin to thin, the buildings take on another character, and eventually the old brewery grounds at Pearl come into view. The place began as the City Brewery in the nineteenth century and has since become one of the city's favorite gathering places, yet something of its industrial past remains in the old buildings.

I would walk through Pearl without trying to accomplish anything. I would look into the shops, watch people moving through the public spaces, and eventually find somewhere to sit with a coffee or something cold. By then the heat would have settled over the city, and I would welcome the chance to stop.

That hour might be my favorite hour of the whole day.

Travel has a way of making people feel guilty about sitting still. There is always another street, another building, another restaurant, another place somebody says you have to see. I would ignore all of it for a while. I would sit at Pearl and watch San Antonio move around me. I would think about the morning, about the river before the crowds arrived, about the Alamo and the mission, about lunch and Market Square, and I would realize that the day had already given me more than I could have carried away in a photograph.

Toward evening I would return to the River Walk. By then the city would have changed again. The heat would begin to soften, restaurants would fill, and the water would become the center of the evening. I would take a river boat ride if the timing allowed, because there are places that deserve to be seen from the water. The bridges, buildings, trees, restaurants, and walkways take on another shape when you are moving beneath them, and for a while the city seems to pass around you rather than the other way around.

Dinner would come afterward, somewhere near the river where I could sit long enough to forget the time. I would order enchiladas, fajitas, or whatever sounded best when the menu was placed in front of me. The choice would matter less than the moment. After a full day of walking, there is a particular pleasure in sitting down to a good meal and knowing that the day's wandering is nearly finished.

When dinner was over, I would walk the river again.

It would seem almost like another place from the one I had seen that morning. The paths would be crowded now, music would come from the restaurants, boats would pass beneath the bridges, and people would gather along the water. In the morning I had watched San Antonio waking. Now I would watch it enjoying the night.

I would keep walking until I was ready to leave the river, then find somewhere from which I could see the city from a little distance. I would want one last look before midnight, one last chance to see the towers and older buildings gathered together beneath the night sky, the streets carrying people toward homes and hotels and places beyond downtown.

And there, at the end of twenty-four hours, I would think about how little a person can truly know of a city in a single day. Yet sometimes a day is enough to understand why a place calls you back.

I would remember the river before sunrise, the old walls of the Alamo, Mission San José, the long lunch, the colors and voices of Market Square, the afternoon at Pearl, the boat moving beneath the bridges, and the river again after dark. Those places would become one long day in my mind rather than separate stops on an itinerary. That is how I would want to remember San Antonio.

Some cities become part of a person's life because he was born there. Some because he lived there for years. Others become important for reasons that are harder to explain. You pass through them, perhaps for a day or a week, and something about the streets, the people, the food, the old buildings, the water moving through the center of everything, reaches you at the right moment and stays.

San Antonio has done that for me.

Give me twenty-four hours there and I would spend them walking, eating, watching, listening, and letting the city take its own time. I would leave after midnight tired from the miles beneath my feet and satisfied in the way a person feels after a day spent exactly where he wanted to be.

And somewhere down the road, when San Antonio was far behind me, I know I would remember the river first.