USA Trip - Part 7 - San Antonio

We got an early start on the road and reached San Antonio at about noon. We parked outside the Hilton Palacio Del Rio, one of the oldest established hotels on the Riverwalk, which we had specified when first organizing our trip with DialAFlight. As I have noted already, the luxury level of hotel always cost more in terms of extras, in this case we opted for valet parking which cost $35 per day and again the WiFi in the room cost us. Although we were early it was no problem for us to check in and establish a base in our room. We were on the 15th? Floor so we had a great view over the town but not a good angle towards the Riverwalk. We now had plenty of time to go for a walk on the Riverwalk and to check out the scenery. Our first impressions in returning to San Antonio were that it was less crowded generally and, more specifically, there were many fewer young people in armed forces uniform.
The Riverwalk is such an attractive route to spend some time and we checked out the shopping mall but still did not locate the basketball boots that Sarah had asked us to get.
We were not clear what we would eat in the day as breakfast had been substantial but in the evening we were going to the Spurs v Oklahoma City NBA game. In the event we just snacked both in the afternoon and also at the game.
We summoned the car and it dutifully arrived, we used the Satnav to get on the correct road to the at&t center but since the internet did not supply the house number on the road we had a false start when we set off in the wrong direction, we soon sorted out the problem but seemed to be driving for far too long before we saw the stadium. Some of the street we travelled did not look like an area to break down in but we emerged at the stadium without problem.
The match itself was the least entertaining of the three games that we saw. Julia has always supported the Spurs and on this occasion they let her down. The match followed a similar pattern to the previous ones; the away team started strongly and led at the half, the home team pulled themselves together and got back into the game in the third quarter but instead of going on to win the Spurs lost their way and the Thunder won on the road. The Spurs had Tony Parker and Tim Duncan returning from injury and Manu Ginobli was also playing. As things progressed Ginobli struggled to hit anything from the floor and then went off injured. Parker had been out for several games and demonstrated that by getting to the basket almost at will but then missing nearly every finish. Duncan was the class act but he was not quite ready to play as many minutes as they needed and he kept having to take a break. Meanwhile the Thunder had Kevin Durant who is tearing up the league this year, for a big man he doesn’t seem to want to do the blue-collar work but he can score, every time the Spurs got back in touch he knocked them back with an easy score, he finished with 25 points.
We blessed the Satnav when we were detoured out of the car park into exactly the opposite direction to how we had come to the game. We trusted the device even when it ordered us onto a freeway which felt like it was in totally the wrong direction and our trust was rewarded when two junctions later we were in familiar territory and heading into the hotel. It was very poor value but the valet parking does make life really easy – we pulled up outside the hotel and passed the keys to a porter. We finished the evening sitting on our balcony drinking tea and watching the world go by.
We resolutely slept in on the next day which was Sunday, as we once again drank tea on our balcony we noticed that a large proportion of the passers by were in running kit. It turned out to be the “Rock n Roll” Marathon and we might have enjoyed checking it out if we had done a little more research. I have managed one 10K run for charity but the drumming on my knees does me no good. I figure that if I only have a finite number of miles left in my old legs I prefer to use them up on a tennis court. I cannot therefore see me ever doing a marathon but every year my nephews run the Bristol Half Marathon and through sponsorship produce a large sum of money for Heart Disease Research.
We had a breakfast in a food court – never our preferred option but it served its turn. We then visited the Alamo, which is maintained and supported by The Daughters of the Republic of Texas and is therefore free to look round. We spent $7.00 each to hire an audio commentary and this was a brilliant addition to the tour. There were numbered sites where you switched on the device and were told what happened there.
I would never seek to minimize the sacrifice of the brave men who crossed Travis’ line and opted to die for their cause but as we followed the chain of events it seemed that all the time, 12 days, which the Alamo defenders bought for Sam Houston to raise his army was spent with little more than skirmishes going on, as Santa Anna gathered his forces ready for one decisive assault. This finally happened on March 6th 1836, there were three assaults in the early morning, the third being fully successful. The entire garrison was wiped out and the battle was over by 6.30am. Opinions differ regarding the casualty figures on both sides, all the adult male defenders were killed estimates vary between 150 and 200, the list at the Alamo gives 189 names but the Mexican casualties were higher between 400 and 600 killed and many more wounded.
There are many facts to juggle with but as usual I remember some more than others. As the defenders were forced back from the ramparts they had to give up their cannon, but in the chaos of the time the guns were not spiked and the Mexicans simply turned them round and fired down the length of the long barracks causing many casualties with little chance of reply. The breakdown of the defenders by state is interesting, there were more listed as coming from the British Isles (23) than there were from Texas (11). My abiding memory though is that one of the officer’s wives was wounded by a shot in the leg, when the women and children were released after the battle they were to walk to wherever they found comfort, once again it illustrates that it wasn’t just the men who were tough in those days.
It seems to me that the Alamo became such a rallying cry in Texas not just because of the defense but because of Santa Anna’s merciless treatment of the defenders and this, as much as anything, was his undoing.
Despite their losses at the Alamo, the Mexican army in Texas outnumbered the Texan army by almost 6 to 1. Santa Anna assumed that knowledge of the disparity in troop numbers and the fate of the Texan soldiers at the Alamo would quell the resistance, and that Texan soldiers would quickly leave the territory. News of the Alamo's fall had the opposite effect, and men flocked to Houston's army. The New York Post editorialized that "had Santa Anna treated the vanquished with moderation and generosity, it would have been difficult if not impossible to awaken that general sympathy for the people of Texas which now impels so many adventurous and ardent spirits to throng to the aid of their brethren". On the afternoon of April 21 the Texan army attacked Santa Anna's camp near Lynchburg Ferry. The Mexican army was taken by surprise, and the Battle of San Jacinto was essentially over after 18 minutes. During the fighting, many of the Texan soldiers repeatedly cried "Remember the Alamo!" Santa Anna was captured the following day, and reportedly told Houston: "That man may consider himself born to no common destiny who has conquered the Napoleon of the West. And now it remains for him to be generous to the vanquished." Houston replied, "You should have remembered that at the Alamo". Santa Anna was forced to order his troops out of Texas, ending Mexican control of the province and giving some legitimacy to the new republic.
We hoped to see the battlefield of San Jacinto later in our trip when we reached Houston but that became a different story.
While in the grounds of the Alamo we came upon two men dressed in the uniform of the time armed to the teeth with the period weaponry. They were very interesting in their explanations of the battle but when they realised that we were English it was more amusing to hear their amazement that we were not able to arm ourselves at home. One of them was huge, had he been any bigger he could have applied for statehood, claimed to have read of unrest in Britain because of people wanting to arm themselves due to the increase of gun-crime. I can remember no such debate but it is interesting that, although our regular police are not armed, we have armed response units on call, and they have a very mixed record of success when called into action.
After the Alamo we continued into the city and arrived at the Buckhorn Saloon which incorporated the Texas Ranger Museum. We decided to sample its delights and history was made because it was the first time we had a reduced price due to our advanced years.
We tackled the Texas Rangers part first, it was interesting, there were many firearms on display apparently used on both sides with equal abandon, then we arrived at a frontier town’s main street, all inside the building, and finally we came upon the car which Bonnie and Clyde were in when they finally met their ends. I actually took it to be the real thing until, looking closer, I spotted that the bullet-holes were two-dimensional. I then took the law into my own hands, ignored the do not touch sign and ran my hand over the worst of the damage – it was totally smooth and the “holes” were transferred on. Apparently the authorities had lost enough law officers to the gang to convince them that no attempt to arrest them was worthwhile – so they ambushed the pair and made the car into a sieve without warning.
We then passed seamlessly into the Buckhorn saloon exhibits, basically in the frontier days anyone who brought in a set of animal horns could cash them in for a drink and many must have done it. The exhibits consisted of furniture made with horns; it’s hard to imagine less comfortable seats, and stuffed animals. The animals were in loose groupings and had the common denominator of having been shot. Only about 40% of the exhibits were labeled so there was little attempt to educate the masses. In the African area a sizable proportion of the animals had been slain by a man with a bow and arrows – the whole thing left us a bit cold but it was remarkable for its sheer size.
We left the exhibitions and went to the bar; being entirely out of animal horns we were pleased to find that they also take cash.
When we returned to the hotel we took advantage of the hot tub next to the pool outside on about the fifth floor, we felt that we were operating under false pretenses in that the others in the tub were soaking off the affects of their marathons and we were simply being lazy.
That evening we ate on the Riverwalk at our hotel, combining the people watching with the ability to charge the meal to our room.
We packed most of our stuff that night as we wanted to do a little sight-seeing before heading on to Corpus Christi and our good friends the Walls.