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04/25/2008: "San Antonio Wrap"

Home in one piece from San Antonio and, frankly, I'm looking for nothing more than a quiet place to take a nap.

The trip went well, and the town turned out to be better than expected. Like a lot of the places I go on business, all I knew about San Antonio were the most superficial of details - the home of the Alamo, the Riverwalk, and the Spurs. I can tell you, though, that there's a lot more going on. The town was in the middle of a week-long fiesta celebrating the anniversary of the capture of Mexican General Santa Anna during the war for Texan independance, and these guys know how to party - parades, bands, block parties. As mentioned earlier, I had a chance to visit the Alamo, and also spent several evenings on the Riverwalk.

The San Antonio River runs through the middle of town, and much like the LA River here it's used for flood control. But unlike our concrete rivers, the San Antonio is fully landscaped - and fully utilized by the population. There are paths and bridges and many access points to the river. The Riverwalk itself is a loop of the river that was bypassed by a cutoff earlier in history. Because of that, they can protect it with sluice gates when there is a flood - and that means that businesses can operate at river level, 20 feet below the streets above. At first glance, it looks a lot like the Jungle Ride at Disneyland - right down to the boats. But there are fantastic restaurants, lots of trees and birds, and floating bands of mariachis to serenade you as you dine. I had dinner one night at the Iron Cactus, an upscale Tex-Mex eatery, and our group dinner was at Landry's Seafood. Both were outstanding, and the fact that the local brew is Shiner Bock only made things better.

But now it's back to the real world ...