San Antonio

A new trip in Texas, starting this Friday. We are two, attending next week a training course in Dallas. We will leave early in the morning. The flight will take around three hours. As soon as we are on the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, we will start driving toward San Antonio. They say the river walk there is fabulous, and hopefully there would be the chance of a boat ride.

I'm just reading the history of the place. River Walk, Paseo del Rio, the first document about is from 1536 - written by Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, a shipwrecked captive of Indians.
June 13, 1691, Padre Damian Massanet celebrated here a mass and renamed the stream San Antonio, because it was Saint Antony's day.
And the history went on, in 1821 Mexico gained its independence from Spain, in 1825 US immigrants reached the settlement fo San Antonio and began purchasing land, in 1830 Mexico declared US immigration illegal, in 1836, after fierce battles, Texas gained its independence from Mexico, the border was on Nueces River, in 1845 Texas became a component of the US. The Mexican War followed, the peace treaty would set the things: besides Texas, US took California, Arizona and New Mexico. The Texas border would be from now on Rio Grande.

I've just passed on another web site - here is the history of the siege of Alamo:

In December 1835, Ben Milam led Texian and Tejano volunteers against Mexican troops quartered in the city. After five days of house-to-house fighting, they forced General Marín Perfecto de Cós and his soldiers to surrender. The victorious volunteers then occupied the Alamo — already fortified prior to the battle by Cós' men — and strengthened its defenses.
On February 23, 1836, the arrival of General Antonio López de Santa Anna's army outside San Antonio nearly caught them by surprise. Undaunted, the Texians and Tejanos prepared to defend the Alamo together. The defenders held out for 13 days against Santa Anna's army. William B. Travis, the commander of the Alamo sent forth couriers carrying pleas for help to communities in Texas. On the eighth day of the siege, a band of 32 volunteers from Gonzales arrived, bringing the number of defenders to nearly two hundred. Legend holds that with the possibility of additional help fading, Colonel Travis drew a line on the ground and asked any man willing to stay and fight to step over — all except one did. As the defenders saw it, the Alamo was the key to the defense of Texas, and they were ready to give their lives rather than surrender their position to General Santa Anna. Among the Alamo's garrison were Jim Bowie, renowned knife fighter, and David Crockett, famed frontiersman and former congressman from Tennessee.
The final assault came before daybreak on the morning of March 6, 1836, as columns of Mexican soldiers emerged from the predawn darkness and headed for the Alamo's walls. Cannon and small arms fire from inside the Alamo beat back several attacks. Regrouping, the Mexicans scaled the walls and rushed into the compound. Once inside, they turned a captured cannon on the Long Barrack and church, blasting open the barricaded doors. The desperate struggle continued until the defenders were overwhelmed. By sunrise, the battle had ended and Santa Anna entered the Alamo compound to survey the scene of his victory.

And then we will visit Houston, with its Rothko Chapel - on Sunday evening we will be in Dallas, as our training starts on Monday. It will the whole next week.