Reply #134: It's one of those places that is more impressive if you can visualize it in context.

[jobycom]

I don't mean the John Wayne battle myth, though that's impressive, too. There are a series of missions in San Antonio, and none are impressive by themselves. One is stuck out in the weeds, and one is just in a retail strip mall area. But if you get into the history of the region, and can visualize the missions as the only structures around, and what they meant to the region in terms of agriculture, economics, religion, government, stability, culture, and even the negatives like imperialism and domination, they gain in stature. The smallest mission, the one stuck out in the weeds south of the city, is the most plain, but it's also the one that looks the most like a frontier outpost. You can still see the irrigation ditches, and how the land was manipulated to increase food. If you know anything about medieval Islamic history, the irrigation system is even more impressive, because you can see the Arabic/Islamic influence in the Spanish irrigation system, and it ties the world's history together visually. My own interpretation is that it's harder to view current history in terms of "us" and "them" when you understand how much of "us" was influenced by our contact with "them."

There's an aquaduct just north of that most southern mission. It's a little thing, not impressive at all to see, until you think about its age, and then when you realize what it must have meant for the settlers and the Native Americans to see such a thing, to see the technology of having water cross a ditch so it could reach fields on the other side.

It's the historian in me, but I think San Antonio is one of the most fascinating places in the world, including the little old Alamo church that stands right across from the Riverwalk.