{"id":1952,"date":"2013-09-17T12:31:17","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T12:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/?p=1952"},"modified":"2022-08-26T08:31:13","modified_gmt":"2022-08-26T08:31:13","slug":"lonestarcon3-or-what-i-did-in-my-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/2013\/09\/lonestarcon3-or-what-i-did-in-my-holidays\/","title":{"rendered":"LoneStarCon3: or, what I did in my holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late August\/early September saw me in San Antonio, Texas, for LoneStarCon3<\/a>, a.k.a. Worldcon. Yee-haw!<\/p>\n

The main thing to report: I enjoyed myself, and a lot more than I thought I would. I wasn\u2019t expecting to go to Worldcon at all, until I suddenly found I had a book coming out in August. Ah well, if a week in Texas for a bit of self-promotion seems the best thing then who am I to argue?<\/p>\n

San Antonio: a lovely town centre, though I can\u2019t speak for the outskirts. Beyond the limits of a 30 minute casual stroll it might be a gang-raddled urban wasteland, though I\u2019m guessing not. The nights were singularly unpunctuated by wailing sirens and gunshots; the loudest thing was the mournful cry of a passing goods train, which is such a delightfully American sound.<\/p>\n

\"IMAG0621\"<\/a>

An Alamo selfie<\/p><\/div>\n

For starters, it has the Alamo<\/a>, and it has the River Walk<\/a>. The Alamo was smaller than expected, which shouldn\u2019t really have been much of a surprise: most it consisted of empty space inside a large perimeter wall. and that space is now the plaza in front of it. The image that everyone recognises is the church inside the Alamo, where the few survivors (women, children and slaves; there was chivalry, of a sort) were able to huddle in the sacristy. I got to watch the History Channel presentation of what happened and felt like saluting.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The River Walk, from room 1922 of the San Antonio Marriott Riverwalk hotel<\/p><\/div>\n

The River Walk is a wonderful example of life handing you lemons and making gin and tonic. Major floods back in the 1920s led the city fathers to cut a drainage channel for the river. They could have paved over it and kept it as a storm sewer. But no, they decided to landscape it, plant it with trees and bushes, and create a shady network of walkways beneath street level that will get you to most places in the city centre. As well as being a handy means of pedestrian access, it’s lined with restaurants (and predatory pigeons that come and land on your table if you don’t get firm with them) and stalls of various kinds. Without it, San Antonio would just be a hot and dusty Texas town. With it, it\u2019s something else altogether. Granted it\u2019s a little like an overgrown Center Parcs and will never fool anyone into thinking it\u2019s natural, but so what. It\u2019s lovely.<\/p>\n