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We got up at a leisurely pace this morning and took cold showers for the second straight morning. The hotel experienced a boiler problem Friday night and has not had hot water since. The hot water was back by mid-afternoon. It's hard to know whether to complain when a hotel is so nice but lacks something so basic.
We decided to go see some missions today. As my friend Ed pointed out, the "Alamo itself is actually kind of wimpy." I hesitated going out the door as I found the Redskins game was being broadcast on television. Instead, I watched pieces of the game from the back of the van as Ann drove everywhere. The game was out of hand by the beginning of the second quarter.
There are four missions close to San Antonio as part of the San Antonio Missions National Historic Park. We visited two - Mission San José and Mission Concepción. Mission San José was the best. It consisted of a huge walled complex encompassing eight to ten acres. Had we known it was an active mission we might have gone in time for the church service. The service was still in session as we arrived. We heard guitars and other instruments playing upbeat tunes. We couldn't hear enough to know whether the songs were in English or Spanish. They sounded Spanish but the service was finishing up and we didn't hear enough to differentiate.
The wall around the mission contained apartments that had been used by the native converts. The Spanish apparently changed the traditional Indian diet from one based upon corn to one based upon wheat. This education, including dietary, musical, and religious teachings, occurred within the safety of the compound. Early Spaniards commented that the land outside of the mission was fertile enough to allow game hunting from the walls of the mission.
We poked our heads inside the church but we didn't look around too much as the congregationalists were filing their way out. We found some shade outside the church under some large trees. The sun beats down relentlessly when you're not in the shade.
Next we went to Mission Concepción. Ann and Carol went inside to look around. I stayed in the van and watched Buffalo pummel the Redskins.
We drove back northward towards San Antonio, winding our way towards Riverwalk. There was a German settlement at the south end of Riverwalk. Many of the houses were of historical value; some of them had been restored. Some of the nicest houses (and a few Bed & Breakfasts) had their own pathway to Riverwalk. But some of the houses were in total disarray and lower class housing exists within a block of the end of Riverwalk. We were surprised to find convenience stores with bulletproof glass enclosures so close to San Antonio's best attraction. We began to notice the intense police presence around the tourist areas.
We drove back towards town and went to a marketplace that we learned about from a gentleman at Mission San Jose. We found a Mexican restaurant with an outside café and we sat down. I paid a couple of gentlemen to sing and play their guitars. They wanted five dollars to play so I paid them. It was cute - like feeding squirrels. Soon you grow tired of them and want them to go away but they never leave. After dinner (or was it lunch) we looked around the market. It was the same "Mexican junk" we saw in Juarez.
(Continued on page 2)
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