Texas Diary - Part 3: A Day Exploring San Antonio

Article and photos:Phan Quoc Vinh

After a while of surfing the internet to find tourist information about Texas, I clicked on the request to have flyers sent to my home address so I could read them at my leisure. Just a few days later, the whole room was filled with hundreds of colorful flyers, big and small, from thousands of cities in Texas, inviting me to come visit.

Imagine nearly 1,215 cities of all kinds (28 cities with population density over 100,000 people), including cities with only two or three thousand people living, inviting tourists to visit, making me suddenly think that just arranging to visit each place one day would take nearly 4 years of non-stop travel! Every place is said to be paradise, every place is the most wonderful. So "all beginnings are difficult", I chose San Antonio for my first solo backpacking trip in the US simply because the bus fare at the time of opening was extremely attractive: 1 USD (So only 1 week after the trial run, it was not effective, so the bus company cut this route!).

After more than 6 hours, I arrived in San Antonio at dawn. Leaving the bus, my whole body was shaking, huddled together in a quiet place because all tourist attractions only started welcoming visitors at 9am, and there were still 3 hours to go. Trying to hold a can of auto-heating cocoa bought in a roadside shop, the feeling of excitement was gradually being creeped by the cold. Do I have to rent a hotel to avoid the cold for a few hours with a large amount of money?

I made a decision (probably one of the best decisions) to take a city bus for $1.10 and climb in and sit in the heater to let the bus take me all over the city, through every nook and cranny without caring where I was! The driver who was carrying such a strange passenger had to ask casually and when he knew the reason, he laughed loudly and did not forget to introduce the places I needed to visit with the warm, proud Texas accent of a long-time “Texan”.

After sitting in the middle of the park, eating a homemade sticky rice with peanuts, the clock struck 9am. The city was turning around, activities were busier, the sound of vehicles began to rush, urging me to carry my backpack and walk deeper into the city center.

The first stop is the Vietnam and Korean War Memorial with statues of American soldiers tending to their wounded comrades on the battlefield, poems of young American soldiers wishing to return home from the battlefield, and memorials of the sons of San Antonio who died in the war. I still like the scarlet flower beds next to the monument as if to heal the sad images and the dawn shining through the leaves calling for peace to return everywhere.

Passing Travis Park - named after the man who had great contributions in liberating Texas from the Mexicans, I visited the Alamo Citadel. Alamo was formerly a small village, a historical site of the United States recording the war with the goal of expanding the territory to the South, a fierce point of dispute in the border area between the United States and Mexico. Especially the fight for independence for the state of Texas in 1836 by the Americans from the rule of the Mexicans during the siege from February 23 to March 6, 1836.

Considered a national historical site that every American must visit at least once in their lifetime, it is understandable that I had to stand in line for more than an hour to get inside the memorial house. Surrounding the site are artifacts from the war, letters exchanged between the two sides, majestic artillery vehicles, and a scale model depicting the battle, which helps viewers better understand the turning point in American history.

The luckiest thing was that I got to see the reenactment of the Alamo battlefield right in front of the citadel with artillery positions and ancient soldier uniforms. The sound of artillery fire shook the street even though there was only smoke and explosions, the sound of returning gunfire, the shouts of generals from both sides... in short, the combination of all the "hearing a hundred times is not as good as seeing once" things appeared here. But even though there were still many bangs inside, outside the street artists still let their souls sing melodious music in the gentle early spring sunshine as if inviting tourists to relax in the peaceful city of San Antonio.

Coming here, tourists can visit free museums and should also spend money to visit the Guinness World Records Museum, the art museum, see wax statues and if you are not faint-hearted, take a tour through "Ripley's Haunted Adventure", where many hideous ghosts will try to make you "faint on the kumquat branch" or hold laser guns to shoot at the strange 3D characters in the famous action adventure movie "Tomb Raider".

After devouring a huge loaf of bread three inches long, I took a double-decker bus for a tour around the city: passing through the main inner-city streets, visiting the Mexican flea market with many fun activities for tourists, the old town of King Williams, La Villita... and of course, I couldn't help but stop at Hemisfair Park to enter the Tower of the Americas. This was the tallest tower in the United States from 1968 until 1996 when the Las Vegas Tower was completed with a height of 215 meters with 952 steps that the fastest climber recorded in just 5 minutes and 18 seconds in...1981.

As the tallest building in San Antonio, when visitors reach the top floor, they can walk around and take in the entire city. Add a few 25 cent coins to the binoculars, and in a minute they can pull each house and each tree close to their arms. The sky is blue, the space is high and the view is maximized. Perhaps the dream of being a white dove like in the song "Voluntary" has also come true when coming here.

It was late afternoon and I was hungry, so I stopped by a premium steakhouse next to the San Antonio riverside (also known by its Spanish name, Paseo del Río). Along the small, peaceful river, people have created a closed pedestrian street with flowers and grass, gently decorated food stalls, and a peaceful scene. The river surface is so clear that it can even reflect people's shadows, the lights from the boats up and down the banks are like flickering fireflies. Somewhere, young couples are taking wedding photos with the bride and groom, making a corner of the river bustling. Only when you come to admire it will you know why this place is considered one of the must-see destinations for couples everywhere.

When the sky turns dark, people rush out to eat, drink, and walk after an interesting day of sightseeing, watching the pairs of wild ducks roaming along the banks. The melodious music and the yellow lights shining from both sides of the river make the nighttime city tour by boat for everyone, including me, feel like we are in the faraway Italian city of Venice and like Alice lost in Wonderland.

Everything was like a dream until the clock rang to signal the time to go home… The moon had risen, the bus had rolled away from the stop to lull me into another 6 hours of rocking sleep. Maybe tonight and tomorrow I will dream about San Antonio again!

More information:

- San Antonio is the seventh most populous city in the United States and the second most populous in the state of Texas, with a population of 1.3 million. The city is located in the southwestern United States, in the central part of Texas, and the southwestern part of the metropolitan area known as the Texas Triangle, which includes Dallas–Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Houston. San Antonio is named after Saint Anthony (Spanish for "Saint Anthony"), whose feast day is June 13, when a Spanish expedition stopped in the area in 1691. The city receives an estimated 26 million visitors each year, according to the city's Tourism Promotion Center.

- Before going sightseeing, you should visit the city's Tourist Center to get free maps, tourist information books and discount coupons to save money. You should buy a package ticket of 3-4 points at once, which will be cheaper than buying each place separately.

- Visitors can walk to visit the city center or can buy horse-drawn carriage tours, trolleys or double-decker buses to tour around the main attractions. The city bus system in San Antonio is also diverse, easy to find stops. If you want to go to other places far from the city, you can check out the private tourist bus route.

- If you like backpacking, you can hunt for cheap bus tickets online.http://www.megabus.com, can buy 1 USD tickets if booked early.

The Thanh