A national conference brought me to San Antonio for the first time. Regular readers already know that I spent much of my free time during my week-long stay just outside our hotel enjoying the sights and sounds of the River Walk. Of the many sights and historic locations in this beautiful Texas city, the River Walk is probably the best bang for the buck. It costs you only your time unless you choose to spend your money at one of the many restaurants and other shops that line the canal. You can read more about the canal from my earlier post here.

The focus of this post is to share a gallery of photos captured along the canal during one of the inexpensive cruises. For those of a certain age, like myself, a senior ticket was only $7 in the summer of 2017. As a result, I found myself on one of the cruise boats on two separate occasions, once in the afternoon and once in the early evening. The gallery below is a mixture of images from those trips. Other than the image above featured to give you an idea of what the cruise boats look like, the images were captured while on the cruise. Each boat operator provided a running commentary of the many sights along the river.

This post reflects a change in my photo processing workflow. Since beginning this blog, most of the images I’ve processed for publication here have been developed in Lightroom or Adobe Photoshop Elements. Awhile back I started using some of the NIK tools for HDR or black-and-white enhancement on specific images. With this collection of images, most of them were processed with basic development in Lightroom and then each image was exported to Luminar 2018 for further processing. If you have an opinion as to the change in style you may notice, please comment. I am open to constructive criticism, so tell me honestly whether you like the new style or not. As always, in most browsers, you can click on an image to enlarge it and to scroll through the gallery.

John Steiner

The San Antonio River, named in 1691, and the city of San Antonio have been intertwined for centuries. The first bridge across the river at San Antonio connected the Presidio, a Spanish fort built in 1716, to the Mission San Antonio in 1736. Over the centuries, the population growth of the city created flooding issues on a regular basis. By the 1920s, flood control was a major concern and in 1926, a bypass channel was created. You can read more about the River Walk’s early history from a timeline published here.

In 1929, and architect by the name of Robert H. Hugman proposed a plan for shops to property owners and civic leaders. Leveraging funding via the WPA, construction on the project began in 1939. In 1946, the first restaurant at the river bend, Casa Rio, opened. It is still open today. During the 1960s, the anticipation of a World’s Fair, the 1968 Hemisfair brought new construction, hotels and restaurants, to the edge of the river.

My first views of the river were from the upper level entrance to the Marriott Hotel. Stepping outside on a bridge, I saw a Mexican Restaurant. The weather, unsettled and rainy, was much better than forecast and few people were about. Many places were closed on the Sunday I arrived due to the possible arrival of Hurricane Harvey. As I noted in an earlier post, a last-minute change in the path of the hurricane spared San Antonio while Hurricane Harvey battered Houston, the worst weather I saw was light showers. After my arrival that morning and a quick lunch, I set out to explore the well-known attraction.

The hotel is located at the end of a “spur” canal in the river, a large shopping mall, RiverCenter Mall is a major attraction and, as I noted in my post about San Antonio a few weeks back, things were pretty quiet. There are daily cruises along the river, but the sign at the nearby ticket window noted the cruises were closed due to the forecast weather. Before I would leave in about a week, I will have taken that cruise a couple of times. Before the end of the month, I’ll share some of the sights from those trips.

My walk along the canals was punctuated by occasional showers, but none strong enough to make me seek shelter, though a few of my photos were spoiled by inadvertent raindrops on the camera lens. In the photo above, a light shower causes ripples in the river. Many of the photos I share here appear to be captured from upon the water, but there are many bridges and wider areas of sidewalk that make for views that appear to be from the water rather than from the shore.

There are many places along the beautiful walk to sit and rest. One evening after our day’s meetings, my colleagues and I walked much of the available canal sidewalks. There are plenty of opportunities to cross from one side to the other so we were able to mostly walk in one direction on the right bank and return on the left bank. At “T”s in the canal, we sometimes swapped banks.

The gallery of images below features photos taken both on my initial walk on Sunday and the late afternoon and evening walk a few days later. In most browsers, you can click on an image to enlarge it and to scroll through the gallery.

John Steiner

On the late summer trip to San Antonio, I spent a lot of time walking the iconic River Walk. At $7 USD a seat (senior rate), I found myself on the cruise twice, once in late afternoon and once at dusk. In an upcoming Travel Tuesday post, I will share a gallery of images from those cruises. Even though I was using the Sony camera I recently acquired for most images, I always take a handful of shots with my cellphone to feature here on Cellpic Sunday.

About the photo: Cropped to Instagram square format, the image featured this week features one of the older pedestrian bridges across the canal. The Tower Life Building is lit for the evening. The rule for Cellpic Sunday is simple. The image must be captured on a mobile device.

John Steiner

One of the main attractions in San Antonio is the famed River Walk, miles of sidewalk that parallel both sides of a river channel. Though originally built to assist with flood control, a businessman with foresight saw the canal as an opportunity to create an attraction to draw visitors to the city. In the years since its development, many bridges now cross that flood control channel and many tourists stop and shop, enjoy a meal at one of the many restaurants or simply stroll along the canal’s sidewalks.

About the photo: Near the hotel where we stayed, a footbridge just behind a curve in the canal attracted a young couple to capture a quick selfie shot with plenty of greenery behind them. This photo was captured with my Samsung S7 cell phone. To get a better view of the photo on most browsers, clicking or tapping the image will enlarge it and put it on a dark background. The rule for Cellpic Sunday is simple. The image must be captured on a mobile device.

John Steiner