"San Antonio and its Spanish Missions! " a San Antonio Travel Page by Ewingjr98

I made my first short visits to San Antonio in 1996 and 1997, but I just returned recently to actually spend some time downtown.

San Antonio is a huge, sprawling city with well over one million inhabitants. It is really a unique mix of old and new, rich and poor, Hispanic and English. To me, there are two San Antonios: the Riverwalk area (what I jokingly referred to as "the ditch" or "the underground") and the surface (maybe "the real world").

The Riverwalk area is a marvel of modern city revitalization. This is probably one of the most densely packed shopping, eating, and sleeping areas in America if not the world. The river is calm and cool, the trees tall and green. To me, it looked just like Disney World, except I never saw Mickey. This is the safe haven in the "dangerous" city for the white upper middle-class tourists and business people.

The surface area is where the true culture and history emerge. Here you will find authentic local food at reasonable prices, historic buildings, and many of the poorer locals that don't often venture into the Riverwalk.

Perhaps this is the only city in America where the mainstream, upper class keeps to the underground while the poor, downtrodden blue collar workers look down upon them in scorn from the city streets.

I made another trip through San Antonio in August 2006 while traveling with my dad between Houston and El Paso on our way to California.