San Antonio - Backgroud - Overview

San Antonio International Airport (tel 210/207-3411, www.ci.sat.tx.us/aviation/ ) is just north of the I-410 loop which encircles most of the sights. SA Trans Shuttle (tel 1-800/868-7707) makes the twenty-minute journey downtown ($9 one-way, $16 round-trip; every 1015min 4am1am), while normal city buses cost only 75 but take nearly an hour to make the same trip. Taxis cost about $15 (Yellow Cabs tel 210/226-4242). Amtrak arrives centrally at 350 Hoefgen St, while Greyhound operates from 500 N St Mary's St. Pick up information on city transport from the visitor center at 317 Alamo Plaza directly across from the Alamo (daily 8.30am6pm; tel 210/207-6748 or 1-800/447-3372, www.sanantoniocvb.com ), or call the VIA Metropolitan Transit Service (tel 210/362-2020, www.viainfo.net ). Buses are reliable; journeys within the I-410 loop cost 75, and many downtown routes run until 10.30pm. Four downtown streetcar routes serve the major attractions for 50, from Alamo Plaza. A Day Tripper pass available from the VIA Downtown Information Center, 112 Soledad St, costs $2 and can be used on all buses, including express services, and trolleys. Gray Line's bus tours (tel 210/226-1706, www.grayline.com ) are only really of much use as a way to see the most distant missions (3 1/2 hr; $22), though VIA's #42 service from the Alamo does stop at the San Jose mission. The very enjoyable $5.25 boat tours (tel 210/244-5700), which do a leisurely 35-minute circuit of the River Walk, depart from two locations, just below the bridges on Commerce Street and Market Street. You can rent bicycles from Abel's Mobile Bicycle Shop, 1119 Ada St (tel 210/533-9927).

The downtown post office is next to the Alamo at 615 E Houston St (MonFri 8.30am5.30pm; (tel 210/212-8046; zip code 78205).

With neither the modern skyline of an oil town, nor the tumbleweed-strewn landscape of the Wild West, attractive and festive SAN ANTONIO looks nothing like the stereotypical image of Texas despite being pivotal in the state's history. Standing at a geographical crossroads, it encapsulates the complex social and ethnic mixes of all Texas. Although the Germans, among others, have made a strong contribution to its architecture, cuisine and music, today's San Antonio is predominantly Hispanic : abundant Tex-Mex restaurants, the prevalent Catholicism, the newly expanded Mexican Cultural Institute and advertising billboards in Spanish all attest to a long history of "Texican" culture.

Founded in 1691 by Spanish missionaries, San Antonio became a military garrison in 1718, and was settled by the Anglos in the 1720s and 1730s under Austin's colonization program. It is most famous for the legendary Battle of the Alamo in 1836, when the Mexican General Santa Anna, seeking to curb the aspirations of the Anglo-Americans, wiped out a band of Texan volunteers: hence San Antonio's claim to be the "birthplace of the revolution," borne out by its role during Texas's ten subsequent years of independence. After the Civil War, it became a hard-drinking, hard-fighting "sin city," at the heart of the Texas cattle and oil empires. Drastic floods in the 1920s wiped out much of the downtown area, but the sensitive WPA program which revitalized two of the city's prettiest sites, La Villita and the River Walk , laid the foundations for its future as a major tourist destination. San Antonio is now the eighth largest city in the US, but it retains an unhurried, organic feel, thanks to a winning combination of small town warmth, respect for diversity and a self-confidence rooted in its own history.