Remember the Alamo

We arrived in San Antonio on Friday after a difficult journey.

On Saturday we decided to take it very easy, so we decided to drive into San Antonio (we are only about 5 minutes from the centre) and found a vacant Parking Meter to park at. (Sally's disabled parking badge means no payment needed )

Then we set out to see that most famous of all historical Cliche's - The Alamo.
We had a great time as we took the audio tour and found out about how they built the Mission.

The Mission is a fascinating place. It is really old, by any standards, dating back to the 1700’s when it was built as a Spanish Mission. Because of hostile Indians, the Missions were often fortified. It is most know for the Battle of The Alamo which took place in 1835 as part of Mexico’s civil war, which in turn brought about Texas independence from Mexico in 1836. I am still not clear why Americans such as Senator Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Travis and John Wayne were mixed up in a foreign war, but they were. The story of the Alamo can be read in a number of places, most accessible being Wikipedia. However it remains one of the central stories of American history and the site is treated as hallowed ground by all who visit it. For us it (a) filled out a bit of America’s history, that everything West of the Louisiana Purchase was Spanish, then Mexican, for about 300 years, (b) started to place into context the relationship between U.S.A. and Mexico. It is hardly surprising that the border is so flexible as many people of Mexican origin lived in Texas from when it was part of Mexico, indeed it often appears to be more Mexico than U.S.A.

We listened to the Daughters of The Texas Revolution tour guides tell us all about the battle at The Alamo, and about the fascinating history of Mexico, then we went to see the John Wayne Collection of memorabilia from the film The Alamo.

The battle of the Alamo was about claiming equal rights with other areas of Mexico and did not solve much at all, indeed the battle was lost by the Texans. However it galvanised the area into declaring its independence from Mexico and after a couple more reversals Texas was allowed to become a separate and independent country, which it remained for some ten years before entering into the United States in 1846.

While on the tour we listened to a couple of excellent expositions from the staff at the Alamo.

After our visit there we decided to eat out, so stopped at a local steak house The Red Barn and had a very mediocre steak - still you can’t win them all.