I had planned on just hanging out in the hotel room while Brian was at his meeting. A whole week, of a quiet, clean (well, it's a hotel; clean in this case means no toys scattered everywhere...) room, my own T.V., and a book. Well, I devoured the book in one day, but I found plenty of time to nap and watch TLC for extended periods of time! Our hotel was right on the Riverwalk, which is a neat little section of the San Antonio River that winds through downtown. Along the Riverwalk are restaurants, bars, shops, lots of little vendors. It's really quite romantic! We must've walked two miles every day, though, and little pregnant me only packed her flip flops, so Brian so sweetly rubbed my feet for me at night.
The last full day we were there, we hit some of the main sights in town. One, of course, the famous Alamo. The Alamo was one of five Catholic missions in San Antonio founded in the 1700's in wild Texas to convert native people to Catholicism. Surprisingly, they are all still standing and still serving. The Alamo is famous for the number of battles fought between American soldiers and the Mexican army. I couldn't figure out what the big deal was...I mean, usually, you fight for a specific region that has a valuable resource, like clean water, good soil, gold, etc. This place, in 1836, was the desert, 6 million miles away from nowhere. After taking the tour and reading up on the history, I realized it was more of a fight of principle, symbolic of taking a stand for something you believe in. All of the men died defending the Alamo, because they'd rather die than admit defeat.
The Alamo at night.
We did drive to all five missions, I thought it would be neat to see these living pieces of history. We started at Mission Espada, which is the one farthest away from town, the most remote of the missions. Since it was so far from town, it was (and is) the least elaborate, I imagine due to it being so far from supplies and laborers. It was beautiful in its simplicity. The church is still standing, but that's pretty much all that's left of the compound. All the missions housed hundreds of people, had numerous livestock, gardens, granaries; they were self-sufficient little cities. The "mission of the mission" was to convert the native peoples (Indians? Mexicans?) to Catholicism. What struck me as most poignant here at the mission (more so than at the others) was that it is an active parish. (*Side note: I'm not Catholic, so forgive me, my Catholic friends, if I use the wrong words...a parish is like the congregation, right? The area the church serves?) This means that there are still nuns and a priest that live there. You'll see from the pictures just how rustic and remote this place was. The nuns had a little garden full of beautiful flowers, and had many, many birdfeeders filled with birds.
Mission Espada
The church at Mission San Jose
Another view of San Jose
Our last night in San Antonio we walked a few blocks to our hotel to San Fernando Cathedral, which is the oldest cathedral in America! It was beautiful, and very much still in operation. In fact the Pope was there just a few years ago. I took some shots of it at night, and the lighting almost makes it seem like the light of God shining from the cathedral. I had goosebumps when I saw the picture!
Anyways, this was the longest blog post in history, but the pictures were too pretty not to share. And it was nice to share how moved I was in seeing these missions. I could only hope that I would be filled with such convictions to go to so desolate a place, in a dangerous territory filled with warring peoples, to spread the word of God.