tiles – Postcards from Barton Springs

Postcard from San Antonio, Texas: Reclaiming creek as urban asset

March 9, 2024December 8, 2025 postcardsfromsanantonioLeave a comment

Above: “Restoration,” mural by Kathy and Lionel Sosa

Once upon a time, I logged a lot of hours at City Hall, sometimes parking on a surface lot behind it. Behind it meaning on the other side of an unrecognizable creek. An ugly footbridge, hemmed in by chained-link fencing, crossed a narrow trash-filled concrete-walled ditch – San Pedro Creek. A place creepy enough to leave me feeling I should pay an extra dollar or two to park in front of City Hall.

Above: 1889 photograph of San Pedro Springs, Austin History Center via Portal to Texas History

Development and insensitive flood-control projects had destroyed what had once been a healthy spring-fed creek.

Continue reading →

Postcard from Cadiz, Spain: Friendly since Phoenician times

August 28, 2019 postcardsfromsanantonioLeave a comment

This Phoenician woman appeared so friendly in the Cadiz Museum, as though welcoming us to town. Her wave in this post can be considered “adios” because these snapshots are our parting ones.

Love the sensuous Solomonic columns we encountered in random locations, the colorful azulejos benches and the braid left in a church alongside milagros. I had never seen a braid offered in gratitude for a prayer believed answered outside of churches in Mexico.

Parque Genoves

azulejos

hydrangea

milagros

Claudio I, Museo de Cadiz

detail of “The Last Judgment,” Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy, Museo de Cadiz

Monument of the Constitution of 1812, Plaza de Espana

Phoenician sculpture, Museum of Cadiz

Claudio I, Museo de Cadiz

Solomonic columns

detail of “The Last Judgment,” Nicolaes Eliasz Pickenoy, Museo de Cadiz

Monument of the Constitution of 1812, Plaza de Espana

Museum of Cadiz

Phoenician sarcophagi, Museum of Cadiz

post office letter drop

door knocker

Monument of the Constitution of 1812, Plaza de Espana

statue from Roman period of Cadiz, Museo de Cadiz

Next stop Cordoba.

Postcard from Sevilla, Spain: This makes no sense

July 31, 2019 postcardsfromsanantonioLeave a comment

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice: …So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

The most recent post having left you well fed, it is time to work those calories off with a long rambling walk through the streets of Seville.

These remaining orphan photos that failed to find a home in earlier posts make no sense as a group.

Except… this randomness is part of the joy of slow travel. Taking time to stroll and explore areas you might otherwise overlook always leaves one “curiouser and curiouser.”

Seemingly unrelated snapshots can convey the diversified textures that are woven together to create a sense of place.