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San Antonio's Riverwalk may be the coolest (good, fun, interesting, nice, etc.) man-made place I've ever been. The Riverwalk is a combination of Harborplace, Georgetown, and the C&O Canal all rolled into one. I'll tell you more about Riverwalk later.
The first thing that we felt compelled to do was to visit the Alamo. Before visiting the Alamo we wanted to take in an IMAX film about the history of the place. We arrived at the IMAX theater about five minutes after the show started at 11. We noticed that a film about Alaska was playing at noon. Having just visited Alaska in June we thought that a double feature of Alaska and the Alamo at 1 p.m. would be nice. The Alaska film brought back lots of memories and was better suited for IMAX than the Alamo film, although there was nothing wrong with the latter.
In case you're unfamiliar with the history of the Alamo, one hundred eighty-nine men defended the stronghold for thirteen days against the Mexican general Santa Anna. But the general's troops eventually overran the Alamo, incurring heavy losses, killing all the defenders of the Alamo. David Crockett and Sam Bowie (the maker of the famous knife) lost their lives here. Santa Anna ordered that all the Texan defenders' bodies be burned. The unrated film was graphic and displayed the final battle scenes ad nauseam. After the film, as we were filing out of the theater, we heard first cries and then sobs from a young child behind us. We didn't think much about the cries at first until finally the little guy told his mom -- in a loud voice -- what was wrong. "That wasn't no happy ending!" he cried out between the sobs. We turned around and saw a young boy about three years old dressed in cowboy garb - a brown hat, plaid shirt, and leather boots. He continued to sob outside the theater for ten minutes with his mother trying to console him. We wanted to both laugh and cry with him. After he walked out of the theater somebody in the theater joked "Yeah kid, this ain't no Disney movie."
We left the theater in the River Center Mall and continued walking through the mall. By descending the escalator we ended up at the Riverwalk. The Riverwalk is both commercial and non-commercial. The San Antonio River starts nearby. The river is a flight of stairs below the street level so people are always walking up above on the sidewalks and down by the river along the pathways that line the river. The river is actually a canal and has defined concrete sides. At times the river branches and then comes back together again. Each side of each branch has a walkway - sometimes concrete and sometimes cobblestone - and each walkway is lined with bushes, palm trees, cascading fountains, and flowering plants. Pedestrian bridges arch high over the canals allowing people to cross the river. Low flat motorized barges seat twenty to forty people and move up and down the canals constantly. Some barges ferry passengers while others offer dinner and drinks. A single person standing on the rear of the barge pilots each barge.
People walk up and down the river constantly. At certain places the river/canal is lined with business establishments. There are restaurants, bars, hotels, B&B's, and shops. This is why I stated that the walk is both commercial and non-commercial. One can easily skip the restaurants and shops and just walk up and down the river. Riverwalk is about two miles long although we didn't walk the entire length.
The commercial sections of Riverwalk were crowded during the afternoon hours today. Almost every restaurant had a twenty or thirty minute wait to be seated at a (Continued on page 2)
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