THIS IS A SUGGESTED ITINERARY ONLY**
Day 1: Historic Adventures Down South
From your newly restored early-twentieth-century room at The St. Anthony Hotel, plan your tour of the five eighteenth-century Spanish Colonial missions that earned UNESCO World Heritage status. About a mile from the stone steps of the Alamo, the River Walk’s expanded Mission Trail will lead you to Missions Concepción, San Jóse, San Juan, and Espada. While you’re headed south, take a self-guided walking tour through King William’s Greek Revival, Victorian, and Italianate homes before visiting the Steves Homestead Museum and Villa Finale. Making use of its historic charm, Southtown is full of popular bars and restaurants housed in retrofitted spaces. At Liberty Bar, guests enjoy contemporary American and Texas fare in a former convent, now painted pink, while patrons at Bliss dine in an elegantly redesigned gas station. Guests at Battalion, one of Southtown newest upscale restaurants, sip wine in the old Fire Station No. 7, built in 1924. In addition to housing the city’s longest-running contemporary art space, Blue star Arts Complex, a redeveloped ice-and-cold storage warehouse, hosts an assortment of art galleries, working studios, boutique art shops, and delicious food and drink.
Day 2: Museums
If you only have one day to explore San Antonio’s exceptional museums, you’re going to have to make some tough choices. Western buffs and Texas naturalist gravitate to the Briscoe Western Art Museum-where visitors admire art, history, and culture of the American West- and The Witte Museum, which showcases Texas nature, science, and culture. The San Antonio Museum of Art and the McNay Art Museum exhibit paintings, sculpture, and other works of art in a retrofitted brewery and mansion, respectively, and both feature beautiful courtyards. Stroll through the newly redeveloped San Antonio Botanical Garden before taking a driving tour through the charming Monte Vista Historic District. One of the largest and oldest historic districts in the nation, Monte Vista is filled with turn-of-the-twentieth century bungalows in an array of styles: Georgian, Moorish, Antebellum, Victorian, Queen Anne, Spanish, and Hollywood. Recharge with gumbo, rabbit crépinette, and New Orleans jazz at the Cookhouse or soak those tired feet under the cypress trees San Pedro Springs Pool before catching a show at The Public Theater of San Antonio.
Day 3: Natural History
Get out of town and hike where the dinosaurs roamed. Government Canyon State Natural Area is home to 110-million-year-old Acrocanthosaurus and Sauroposeidon tracks, cast of which were used in The Witte Museum renovation. Forty miles of hiking and biking trails lead visitors through 12,000 acres of gently rolling grasslands, rugged canyons, and shaded creek beds. Pack a picnic or swap your hiking boots for cowboy boots and head a few miles east to John T. Floore’s Country Store. An Authentic Texas dance hall and café rather than an actual store, Floore’s is known to many as the musical birthplace of country music legend Willie Nelson. Not ready to boot scoot back to the bunk house? Continue towards Boerne, which offers shopping, art galleries, turn-of-the-century European architecture, and picturesque gardens and greenbelts.