San Antonio and Austin

The Alamo

The most important thing to know about San Antonio and Austin is the weather. It has been in the high 60's for the last two days. I have been watching the news and actually feel guilty about the weather in New York. Tomorrow it is going to be 72. We should all move here -- it's spring-like and they are practically giving away the real estate. How bad can it be in the summer? We'll get a pool. It will be fine!

Riverwalk

San Antonio has a cute little downtown area. I wandered around, saw the Alamo and enjoyed the Riverwalk area. The river has an oddly artificial quality about it, but it is lined with a million restaurants and bars. I stopped for a beer and enjoyed the sunshine. I would have stayed longer, but there was an incredibly annoying waiter so I left quickly.

LBJ

In Austin I decided to go to the LBJ museum and library. It was an interesting place, but I spent too much time walking through the exhibits about his early years so I was rushed and missed most of the Vietnam exhibit. I did see one mention that Johnson and his advisers 'believed' that the second Gulf of Tonkin incident was legit when they escalated the war. I was impressed that they alluded to this controversy at all. Most of the exhibits were about his legislative achievements, like the Civil Rights act.

A state gift from Iran

For me, one especially interesting part of the museum of is an exhibit on gifts that Johnson was given, by both visiting heads of state and regular folks. The state gifts on display included enormous elephant tusks, gold swords, a Diego Rivera painting from Mexico and this beautiful Persian horse sculpture from Iran. The gifts from the regular citizens ranged from a pair of needlepoint sleepers with the

Lame gifts U.S. give to visiting
Heads of State

presidential seal to an enormous bowie knife. There was also a large variety of gavels -- apparently this was a popular choice. A write-up mentioned that these were just samples of the thousands of gifts a president gets during an administration. I wonder if the givers knew that gifts would most likely end up in storage. I wondered what gifts the U.S. gave in return until I stumbled upon a display of copies of some of these presents. Apparently Johnson preferred gifts of a historical or personal nature. These included a replica of George Washington's reading lamp/candle stand, an ugly chess set and Jefferson's writing stand. One

Fake Oval Office

American born Foreign diplomat was given a framed copy of his birth certificate. These gifts seem pretty lame compared to the others. Perhaps Johnson figured out the whole ends-in-storage part...
I snapped a quick picture of the fake oval office before being thrown out promptly at 5:00 p.m.

Now, much to my chagrin, Austin is the self proclaimed live music capital of the world so I have to go out and find some. Wish me luck.