The Alamo and San Antonio Missions

After a failed attempt at finding San Antonio’s famous River Walk earlier this week, we decided to give sightseeing in our new town another chance.  We did our research this time: the Alamo is immediately adjacent to the River Walk… Pearl Brewery is immediately adjacent to something called the Museum Reach of the River Walk… the two sections are not at all close to one another.  While performing said research, we discovered that San Antonio is home to four Spanish missions, in addition to the Alamo.  We decided to start our day at the Alamo, then follow the National Parks Service’s map through the other four missions.

The Alamo complex is made up of several buildings, including some of the old fort walls and, most famously, the fort’s church (that’s the buildings you see in all the pictures).  We started our visit in the beautiful gardens surrounding the fort before making our way through the other buildings.

Then, we crossed the street and took a stroll on the real River Walk.  This section of the river looked much more like we expected.  Restaurants, hotels, and shops lined both sides of the quiet, tree-lined river, and people strolled leisurely along the banks or took in the sights from one of the river taxis.  We are planning to make many more trips to the River Walk during our time here.  Next time, we’re planning to visit at night when all the trees are lit up and the restaurants are in full swing.

Next up, the first mission on our list, Mission Concepcion.  The inside of this mission’s church has been restored to match the original appearance.
   

We followed the NPS map to Mission San Jose, the largest and most interesting of the four missions.

Next, we stopped at Mission San Juan.  Construction at this site made this a quick stop.

On the way to our next stop, we detoured to the remnants of an aqueduct that used to provide irrigation water to the farm land surrounding the missions.

Our final stop of the day was Mission Espada.  This church, like the churches at all four missions, is still home to a Roman Catholic congregation, and we were treated to an outdoor broadcast of the Spanish-language mass being conducted inside the church while we walked around the mission grounds.

Having just spent the last two years touring the best of Europe’s churches and castles, the missions and their churches were rather humble, but walking through a bit of American history was a nice change of pace.  Check out all the pictures in the pictures tab.