Houston Day 62 - a little Texas history and general updates

So the trip to San Antonio last weekend was lovely.  We learnt much about Texas history, which I will share with you as I tell you about our weekend!




First a broad view.  As most of these stories begin, the place was populated with native tribes before Europeans decided to take over, in this case, the Spanish.  Texas was a part of the Spanish colonies in the Americas for a few hundred years.  Then Mexico won their independence from the Spanish, and Texas was a state of Mexico.  It was pretty sparsely populated, and a bunch of people immigrated from the U.S. as part of a plan to build it up.  Then in the 1830s people of both Mexican and U.S. heritage living in Texas decided they didn't like the way the Mexican government was going, and they fought to win independence.  This they did, and the Republic of Texas lasted for about ten years before they joined the United States.  (Not much mention is made of why the Republic was unviable.  Many Texans would prefer to pretend that Texas is still its own country, and consider themselves "on loan" to the United States.)  Then they left the Union to fight with the Confederacy in the Civil War, and then they lost the Civil War and became part of the States again.  Hilariously, or tragically, or both, the last battle of the Civil War was fought - and won - in Texas after the Confederacy had already surrendered; the news just hadn't made it to Texas yet.

We arrived in San Antonio on Friday evening and stayed in the St Anthony hotel.  We got there Friday evening and went out for a drink on the Riverwalk.  The San Antonio River goes right through downtown and for most of it there are shops, restaurants and bars right on the riverfront - but this is all below street level, so you take stairs down from the street to get to the Riverwalk.  We also had breakfast there on Saturday morning.

 After our lovely weekend breakfast buffet on the river, we headed to the Alamo, and then went to the cinema to see a movie about the Alamo.  The Alamo was a Christian mission in the days of the Spanish colonisation, but then became a military base for the Mexicans.  In the Texas War of Independence the Texans took the Alamo from the Mexicans, who then laid siege to it.  The thirteen-day siege became increasingly desperate for the Texans inside the Alamo, whose requests for help from the main body of the Texan Army were refused.  They pretty much realised they were going to be slaughtered.  On the thirteenth day the Mexicans stormed in at about 5am and killed pretty much everyone there, sparing a handful of women and children.  We actually saw the room that these women and children hid in during the battle - pretty chilling to think of being in their shoes.  Some days or months later General Sam Houston led the Texans in the Battle of San Jacinto against the Mexicans, where Texas finally won its independence.  His pep talk to his troops, and their battle-cry, was "Remember the Alamo".
Texans are incredibly proud of this heroism in their history.  Think about the way Aussies feel about the ANZACs at Gallipoli and the Battle of the Nek, and then imagine if it were a war for our own land and not just a battle we were fighting on Britain's behalf; remember also that overt patriotism is cool here in a way that it definitely is not in Australia, and you'll have some idea about the cultural significance of this building.

Later Saturday evening we headed back to the Riverwalk for dinner.  Before we left Australia Joff and Amber gave us some U.S. currency to be used only for a nice dinner, so we went to a classy Mexican place on the river.  We also took a guided cruise along the river and found out all kinds of interesting historical tidbits.  For example, the Marriott Riverwalk Hotel sits on the site that used to be occupied by the three-storey Fairmount Hotel.  Because the Fairmount is heritage-listed, Marriott couldn't knock it down, so instead they mounted the whole thing on wheels and drove it three blocks down the street and around a corner.  They had to drain the river and reinforce one of the bridges to do it.  It's still operating today, and is in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest object to be moved on pneumatic tyres.  We also drove under a band playing on a bridge for some couples dancing on one of the banks, which was kinda fun.

On Sunday we went to Hemisfair Park, site of the 1968 World Fair.  I think the theme of the Fair was the celebration of the contributions various countries from the Eastern and Western Hemispheres have made to American cultures.  The highlight is the Tower of the Americas, the second-tallest freestanding building in the U.S.  We had a gorgeous lunch at the revolving restaurant at the top of the Tower before driving back to Houston. 
This week at dance school was an improvement on last week.  The desperation and sadness have surfaced less emphatically and for shorter periods of time, meaning I made it to about three-quarters of the classes, as opposed to less than half the classes last week.  I have developed a stress injury in my achilles, though, which meant that for some of the time I was at class, I had to sit out anyway.  Frustrating.
We were intending to go and see one of my friends from dance school play the lead in Oklahoma last night, but then we went to the theater company's headquarters instead of the theater they were actually performing at, and by the time we realised our mistake it was too late to make it to the show.  So other than my audition for Houston Family Arts Center this morning (don't forget you can check out the "Auditions" page to see my progress at cracking into the theater scene here!) we've had a lovely weekend so far of just tooling around the house and doing nothing terribly important.  Tonight we are having dinner at Nick and Rebekah's, and tomorrow we're going to see Harry Potter.