This week I flew to San Antonio, Texas for the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) national conference. This is one of those big, expensive conference deals where professionals from around the country come together to have fun, network, and pretend to learn a little bit here and there. The honest truth is I thought this conference was WAY too little bang for the buck -- it was incredibly expensive, and even though the University was paying for us (myself and my USU colleagues Diane, Derrik, and David) to attend, the budget-conscious person in me couldn't help but wince at the expense. It seems to me the biggest reason for the conference is so CSWE can make some big bucks - but enough about the conference.The upside of it all was getting to visit the amazing city of San Antonio Texas! The city is named after Saint Anthony of Padua, who was the "quickest" saint in the Catholic Church -- canonized less than one year after his death. Anyway, the city is an awesome place. I've never spent any time in Texas to speak of (other than driving through a couple of times, and that of course was northern Texas), and I was pleasantly surprised at how clean and beautiful San Antonio was. We stayed just off the riverwalk (what a cool thing -- see my educational moment below), and I spent every minute not in the conference wandering the city and the riverwalk, taking in the sights and talking to people. Don't worry, I remembered to visit the Alamo (insert groans here), and it was pretty cool, but definitely not the high point of the trip. I also visited some missions and other historical sites, and went up in the World's Fair tower for a bird's eye view of the city. All in all a great trip. I think I could live in San Antonio if I weren't so into the mountains; but I am, so I probably never will. Definitely should be on a list of places to visit, though.
Educational Moment: The San Antonio Riverwalk (also known as Paseo del Rio) is a network of walkways along the banks of the San Antonio River, one story beneath downtown San Antonio. Lined by bars, shops and restaurants, the Riverwalk is an important part of the city's urban fabric and a tourist attraction in its own right. Today, the Riverwalk is an enormously successful special-case pedestrian street, one level down from the automobile street. The Riverwalk winds and loops under bridges as two parallel sidewalks lined with restaurants and shops, connecting the major tourist draws from the Alamo to the San Antonio Museum of Art. During the annual springtime Fiesta San Antonio, the River Parade features flowery floats that literally float.
