Pay attention here: A capital is the city in the state where the capitol building sits.¹ 

Is this distinction helpful? No, it is not. English needs to choose one or the other.  C’mon, English! The two words, in my opinion, introduce an unnecessary and frustrating language variable that adds little, if any, comprehension value.

Okay, moving on from English language idiosyncracies, I’ve visited about 20 U.S. state capitol buildings over the years. Mrs. Anysecondnow and I just toured the one in Annapolis, Maryland.   

My advice is that If a state capital is your destination or reasonably on the way to your destination, you should definitely take the time to visit the capitol. 

Why?  Because, while most people are proud to be from a particular state², state legislators and governors are especially enthusiastic boosters of their state³ (as one would hope!) Consequently, they look for ways to show off their respective states’ awesomeness and their capitol building is a great vehicle to do this.  

As a result, state capitol buildings are chock full of dramatic art and statutes, inspiring historical moment markers, ornate rooms and chambers, fossils, walls of honor, and so much more. Some of the exhibits can be odd — for example, Minnesota has a gigantic gold leaf Roman victory chariot “Quadriga” on their roof — but those oddities make the visits even more interesting.

In addition, all those legislators work in the capitol and I presume they are highly motivated to allocate sufficient funds for upkeep (and golden statues).  As a result, state capitol buildings are typically impressive, gleaming buildings with high levels of workmanship. The Midwestern states particularly go all in — Nebraska, Iowa, and Wisconsin are apparently well known for their detailed interiors. (I have yet to visit them).

State capitols are always free to visit and usually happy to offer state pride freebies, stickers, pens, and so forth. Tours led by enthusiastic guides are also gratis. You’ll have to pass through security screeningExcept Texas! I hope this is still the case, but when I visited the capitol in Austin in 2009, there was no security screening. Just a lone Texas ranger (big, tall and armed) standing near the entrance doors. , but that’s easy enough.

And you better believe that every capitol building has a collection of superlatives. Oldest (MD), tallest (LA), biggest (TX, naturally), etc. And, oh, they love their domes. Biggest dome. (WI). Tallest dome. (IL). Biggest wooden dome! (MD again).

I also admire the capitols that eschew the traditional dome template and attempt something different. Sometimes it works and sometimes maybe it doesn’t, but thanks for trying to be original — we see you, Honolulu and Santa Fe.

Am I going to try to visit every U.S. state capitol building? Eh, I’m not sure about that. But whenever I’m near one, yeah, you bet I’ll stop by.

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1. Yes, the word capital has other definitions — money, an upper case letter, etc. — but for purposes of this article, I am only concerned with the seat of government definition.
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2. Most Americans, it’s fair to say, are proud to be an American to some degree.  But, many Americans are just as proud to be from a particular state, especially when talking to other Americans. For example, as a born Virginian I’ve always felt a bit of a rivalry with our neighbor across the river, Maryland, and will sometimes offer up some light trash talk to Marylanders.
    
   On that point, I concede that Maryland’s state flag is awesome — far better than Virginia’s dull “state seal surrounded by dark blue background” version. And Maryland does have a lot of fun places to visit. And crabs.  I could live in MD and be quite content.
   
   (Bias alert!) But Virginia claims eight presidents and an astounding amount of American history, particularly concentrated in the 1600-1800s from colonial times through the Civil War.  George Washington lived here, as well as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Mason, Patrick Henry – give me liberty or death! – and more.  The Revolutionary War ended here in Yorktown and so did the Civil War at Appomattox (after dozens of major and minor battles throughout the state). And Arlington National Cemetery. Virginia offers up mountains, beaches and rolling hills, plus Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway. Not to mention a bunch of top universities led by UVA, William & Mary, and VA Tech. Virginia is for Lovers!
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3. You will not regret perusing this list of state tourism slogans. So many thoughts.
   
   Do midwestern near-neighbors Illinois and Ohio know they both have similar, weak slogans? “Middle of Everything” and “In the Heart of It All”?
   
   I sort of admire Nebraska leaning into their overlooked plight — “Nebraska, it’s not for everyone” but are you sure you want that to be your official state slogan?
   
   Or how about Oregon’s tentative “We Like It Here, You Might Too”? So humble.
   
   And what lack of creativity resulted in “Washington: The State” and “That’s Wyoming”? I have an image of some young legislative summer interns jokingly submitting “That’s Wyoming” and the legislature or marketing committee or whoever just saying, “Huh. Yeah, whatever, that sounds fine — approved!”
   
   OTOH, maybe it’s because I have skied there, but Utah’s “Greatest Snow on Earth” is pretty fun. I rather like West Virginia’s easy to say and remember “Wild and Wonderful” and the clever “Vermont, Naturally.” And give credit to “Sweet Home Alabama” for taking the easy win.
   
   Finally, I notice that Florida doesn’t have a tourism slogan listed (I suppose it might be “Welcome to the Free State of Florida”. Gag. ), but they really don’t need one. Tourists are going to vacation in Florida either way and a slogan makes no difference. In that spirit, I suggest that California — another state that gets gobs of tourists whether they want them or not — emulate Florida’s easy confidence and drop the forgettable “Dream Big.” ︎

Why, thank you for asking.  Yes, you absolutely should!  

I’m a fan of language immersion programs.  If you can’t live in a country long term, an immersion experience is the next best thing to improve your language skills quickly. 

I’ve been studying Spanish since 2014, poco a poco, little by little, as they say. I’ve reached a point where I can say pretty much what I want to say in Spanish now.  And even though my syntax may not always be how a native speaker might say it, they can understand me and I can understand them.  On the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference) scale, I’d say I’m a solid B2 and can even edge into C1 territory from time to time. (Or, unfortunately, screw up and lapse into B1 or less.) 

I’m going to write a future post about my thoughts on the best language acquisition strategies based on my personal trial and error experiences (I’ve also studied Arabic and some German) as well as conversations with dozens of other language students.  But this post is just about my recent 2.5 weeks in Guatemala learning Spanish and having fun. 

And if you’re an adult language learner, having some fun is important. If not the whole point. Otherwise, why bother?  No one is forcing you to learn a foreign language. 

Fortunately, it’s hard not to have fun in a Spanish speaking country hanging out with other language students and interacting with native speakers. 

I’ve now done three two-week language immersions in the last few years.  The first was in Heredia, Costa Rica and the last two in Antigua, Guatemala.   I plan to keep doing them, hopefully every year or so.  Ideally during the North American winter monthsIt was, no joke, like 9 degrees, and the streets here still filled with ice and snow, when my daughter dropped me off at DCA airport at 630am for my flight south.  Barely six hours later I was enjoying 72 degrees in Guatemala City. .  

In the future I’d like to try programs in Colombia and maybe in the the easy to say, fiendishly hard to spell town of Oaxaca, Mexico. But for this trip, I returned to the same Antigua language school, Maximo Nivel (“highest level”) that I used before in 2024.  Maximo is one of probably a dozen or so language schools in Antigua.   And Antigua is a great town:

In my experience, language schools operate pretty similarly. You choose how many weeks you want to stay – most students are there between one and six weeks – and then you pay a per week tuition along with weekly room and board with a local host family.  The family provides you a daily breakfast and dinner. You can do what you want for lunch. Most students enjoy eating their way through Antigua’s many restaurants. I sure did.

One can skip the host family and stay in a hotel on your own dime, but then you lose out on lots of language speaking opportunities and the fun of getting to know your family.¹

In South or Central America, none of this should be particularly expensive.  In Guatemala, it’s downright cheap.  A standard plan in Antigua of 20 hours of Spanish classes a week plus room and board with a host family costs around $300 per week.  That’s not a typo. The language learning value and fun per dollar is fantastic.     

So how was my experience?  

I arrived on a Saturday afternoon, got picked up at the airport by Maximo (included in their program fees) and was driven to my family in Antigua. I had asked to be within walking distance of the school and they put me in southern part of the city, a relatively quiet zone, and about 15 minutes walk to school.  Perfect.  

That night, I strolled around the town in shirt sleeves, just because I could, then returned for dinner at 7pm and met the other student staying in my house, Rhonda, a 60-something Canadian, halfway through her own 6 week immersion program.  In past language experiences, I’ve lived with other students whose Spanish was so basic they could barely converse.  Happily, Rhonda, though still at a beginner level, was enthusiastic to practice with me and the family. 

The next day, I hiked to Pacaya Volcano with a small group from Maximo.  One of Antigua’s main charms is that it is picturesquely surrounded by volcanoes, both active and dormant. Volcan Pacaya erupts periodically, but usually in a Hawaii-volcano style with languorous, slow-moving lava that is fun to watch rather than an “oh no, run for your lives” Vesuvius-style eruption. 

At present, Pacaya offers hot spots from its last eruption in 2021, but whereas a few years ago tourists could roast marshmallows or even cook pizza over the emerging heat and steam, now it is just a good spot to lightly warm your hands.  Our marshmallows remained unroasted and I eventually tossed mine to a delighted local dog following our group.         

Every Monday at the school there is a great sorting of current and arriving students into that week’s classes according to various students’ language proficiency.  I don’t like to brag, but I will anyway – I was placed into the advanced class with three other students:  Laura from Germany, Daniela from Canada, and Francisco, an American mid-westerner.  I’d say Daniela, born in France, but having lived in Canada for most of her 70 or so years, was the best of us. She had a fine accent and could read out loud as fast as a native speaker.     

While some students arrange for only one-on-one private lessons, most attend group classes from 9am-1pm M-F.  That sounds like a lot of hours, and maybe it is, but the teachers are good at keeping classes fun and interesting.  Our first hour was mostly talking about what we did yesterday, plans for the future and various day-to-day topics with our teacher, Alma, tossing in corrections as needed.  

Next we’d review homework, explore grammar constructions in more depth, and then read about and discuss various current day topics – immigration, euthanasia, modern medicine advances (light topics!) and so forth.

Many students supplemented the morning group classes with another hour or two of private lessons in the afternoons.  Having tried extra private lessons in prior immersion experiences, I declined this time, preferring freedom for the rest of the day.  Instead of afternoon private classes, I supplemented my group lessons with unstructured conversations while walking around the town, going to the gym, getting a haircut, shopping, trying out new restaurants, and hanging out with my host family or their live-in staff. 

Almost as — if not more — important as the classes and study in language schools is “what are you doing for the weekend?” Nearly every student makes plans for one or more weekend excursions.

For my first weekend, I had tentatively planned to join a guided trek up the dormant Volcan Acatenango in order to get a close up view of erupting Volcan Fuego.  I had done this epic overnight hike the last time I was in Antigua. Watching Volcan Fuego explode throughout the day and night was one of the travel highlights of my life and I figured I might as well do it again.  

But then I start thinking more. First, it’s a hard-core hike.  Six or so hours backpacking up a steep trail to the campsite, then spend a night at 12000 feet not getting much sleep thanks to the cold, the altitude, and explosions from Fuego.  Wake up early and climb higher for the sunrise and then hike back down for a quad and leg busting few hours. Drive back to Antigua and stagger back home.

As if that weren’t enough, the Maximo travel agent mentioned that night-time temperatures at the top of Acantenango had been dropping below freezing.  Sheesh. Then, later that morning, I got a text from a new friend who had left Antigua the day before to enjoy the waves, sand, and sun of El Paredon beach about two and half hours south.  She sent photos.

A specific A or B decision started to form in my head: for this coming weekend, would I rather freeze my tush off on a volcano (that I’ve already visited) or hang out at the beach?

A few days later, around 4pm on Saturday, floating in the pool at my modest hotel near the beach, reflecting on a great kayak trip that morning, and now sipping a fruity drink, I knew I had made the right decision.  : )  

Back in my same class on Monday morning, I was already, with some regret, counting the days until the end.  I made sure to enjoy Maximo school’s courtyard and balconies where I sat in the sun every morning, surrounded by vegetation and flowers, watching volcanoes puff smoke in the distance.  This is as lovely as it sounds. 

And it’s even lovelier in February when I can pull up the weather app on my phone and compare the temperature back home in Arlington. 

Following my last class on Friday, I took a shuttle from Antigua to Panajachel, gateway town to Lake Atitlan.  Lurching around narrow Guatemalan mountain curves in a packed minibus with 30 other tourists for over two hours, top heavy with luggage strapped to the bus roof, I found myself thinking comforting, logical thoughts like, “I’m sure our driver regularly checks and replaces his brake pads and fluid.” 

Fortunately, it wasn’t yet my time to careen off a Guatemalan mountainside and we arrived safely. I spent a final four days kayaking, biking, hiking, and steam-bath-soaking in various towns around Atitlan and among the soaring volcano backdrops.

So, amidst the biking, kayaking, and narrow-mountain-road surviving, did my Spanish improve? Yeah, definitely. Like anything else, improvements become more incremental as you progress, but I was definitely feeling like a quicker and smoother Spanish speaker at the end of my 17 days.

I was also able to better nail down tricky verb conjugations like the preterito pluscuamperfecto² and the Spanish system of direct and indirect object placement either before the verb or, in certain cases, tacked on to the end of the verb. Doing all that Spanish in a warm and beautiful place made it even better.

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1. Living with a host family is not necessarily luxurious but I had my own room with a dresser, desk, and private bathroom. I could move around the house freely; for example, sitting in the sunny courtyard every afternoon to do do my homework.  It’s a pretty good set-up. 
   
   Also, these language schools know their clientele is coming from North America and Europe – no one is living on dirt floors and taking cold bucket showers! As a bonus, I could also ask my host family to check some of my homework which they were delighted to do.
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2. Generally equivalent to the English “If I would have done “such and such” thing/activity, then . . . Or if that thing/action would have happened, then . . .” ︎

In some areas of the country you can strategically rack up a ton of stamps.  For example, New York City, Boston, and San Francisco each have at least a half dozen urban and near-urban national park sites. 

Southern Utah also has quite a few spectacular, “only in the American West” park sites grouped reasonably close together.   

Nothing exceeds Washington DC of course.  There are dozens of sites and stamps available here.  And if you branch out into my hometown northern Virginia and also Maryland, you can scoop up even more.  It’s a National Park Passport cornucopia out here in the DC area. 

Looking for easy stamp pick-ups, I’d had my eyes on a strip of NPS sites along the Southeast coast with a line of old forts and natural areas.  None of them are considered NPS jewels like Yellowstone or Yosemite, but a stamp is a stamp.  And even the smaller sites are fun to visit and learn something new.¹ 

The plan was fly to Jacksonville, FL rent a car and drive up to Charleston, SC.  Three days, two nights, seven NPS sites. 

And not just walk into the visitor center, get a stamp, and walk out  That’s lame.  I want to actually experience something at each site before I get the stamp.  

Finally, all of these sites are worth a visit if you have the time, but some are more worth going out of your way for than others. I will therefore throw in my subjective “worth a visit” 1- 5 star rating for each site. 

I love the first day of a trip. You’re fresh, nothing has gone wrong, the excitement of new places and experiences beckons.  Fort Matanzas National Monument is not a big deal but it was the first stop of my trip and I loved it.  Sigh, I’ll always remember Fort Matanzas fondly . . . 

Honestly, most of that fondness was because it was thirty degrees warmer than what I left in Virginia.  I could not stop smiling in the sun.  So this is why people live here. 

As for the site itself, I discovered that the 5 minute ferry ride to the actual fort doesn’t operate on Tuesdays.  I didn’t care.  I could see the fort well enough from the visitor center where there were also plenty of pictures and diagrams of the fort.  I read about the French, Spanish, and British clashesMatanzas means slaughter in Spanish and is what the Spanish did to nearly 250 shipwrecked Frenchmen in 1565. Ouch. No Geneva Conventions back then, that’s for sure. over this New World real estate, walked along a nature trail, and ate my lunch on a perfectly placed picnic table under an ancient Southern live oak.  

Did I mention that it was in the 70s and life was good? 

Located on the bay next to St. Augustine, Castillo de San Marcos National Monument gets my vote for #1 NPS site on this trip.  The fort is the “oldest masonry fortification in the continental United States” and I’d say it looks pretty great for a 350 year old. I enjoyed exploring the fort and especially strolling on the wide ramparts, looking out over the water. 

San Marcos’ sturdy looks are in part due to the coquina shell stone the Spanish engineers used to build it.  Apparently, coquina had never been used to build a fort before but it was termite proof and plentiful, so they gave it a try, hoping it would stand up to cannon fire.  It did.  Like a dream.  When the British attacked the fort in 1702 and again, in 1740, their cannon balls just bounced off or sunk into the stone a few inches.    

Besides the fort, there is lots to see in St. Augustine itself.  I enjoyed walking around the town and especially loved the fabulous architecture and ornamentation of Flagler College and the Lightner Museum.  Overall, I’d say that this NPS site and surrounding city is a must see Florida stop.  

At the opposite end of long lasting forts is Fort Caroline, part of the Timucuan Ecological and HIstoric Preserve.  There is no Fort Caroline left. We don’t even know where the French put the fort – maybe its remains are under the meandering St. John’s River – so the NPS built a nice replica of where it could have been along the river.  

Remember the Fort Matanzas massacre of French shipwreck survivors noted above?  Well, the French got their revenge in this area a few years later and massacred a bunch of Spanish soldiers and settlers.  

Forts are fun (though not massacres), but my Timucuan highlight was a nature hike along the marshes in the Theodore Roosevelt area.  The trail leads to a viewing platform in the middle of the wetlands where you can pick out birds, watch for crocs, and hear the splashes of fish snaring insects.  My hike only scratched the surface of the hiking, kayaking, and beaching available at Timucuan. 

My first NPS site in Georgia was a miss. I discovered the night before that the 45 minute ferry to the  Cumberland Island National Seashore doesn’t run on Wednesdays. I still wanted to stop by and get a stamp from the mainland NPS ferry departure spot, but I could see that all the action is on the island which I could not get to.  

After some wavering, I honorably decided to not get the NPS stamp and instead put Cumberland Island NS on my “come back with Mrs. Anysecondnow and spend the day here” list since the island looks like a fun day trip.  

A gorgeous drive over Georgia bridges and then under the Spanish moss-covered oaks of St. Simon’s Island lead to my last Day 2 stop, Fort Frederica National Monument.  It will not surprise you that Fort Frederica was a key area for yet more Spanish and British conflict over New World territory (I think the French had scooted out from this area by now).  

This is a small site, but pretty enough along the MacKay River and I took a setting-sun walk along shoreline marshes and trees.  There is some serious archaeological research going on in the remains of the Frederica settlement and it is interesting to walk the old settlement “streets” and see the brick grid outlines of small homes and other structures.  

Skipped!  I may not have paid enough attention to ferry schedules in my pre-trip planning, but, fortunately, I did realize that I had already visited Fort Pulaski National Monument nearly 12 years ago on the last afternoon of a work trip.  I don’t remember anything specific but the fort is in good condition with a nice moat, so I’m just going to give it an average 2.5 star rating with an extra bonus for being near Savannah, GA, a great town.

Nevertheless, as fun as Savannah is (and the location of our 5th wedding anniversary), I was happy to skip the detour into town and save more time for time for Charleston later in the day. But first, a stop in Beaufort, South Carolina at . . .

Just about everything connected to the U.S. Reconstruction era is depressing to me and the Reconstruction Era National Historic Park Visitor Center mostly reinforced that.  

My take is that for about 10 years after the Civil War, African Americans were finally able to establish communities, get educated, start businesses, and prosper, even getting elected to local and state positions.  Most of all, they could hope and dream of a completely different future. And then it just got ripped away from them. Violently and illegally.  

Not only that, things stayed bad for nearly another century until the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s.  Chattel slavery may have been gone but state-sanctioned racism and violence took its place.  I applaud the NPS attempts to highlight the inspiring work of so many, black and white, to overcome obstacles, but it is still depressing to think what could have been, what should have been.   

Which brings us to the sign I saw at my last NPS stop:

The first two sections are fine. Not a bad idea, in fact, to encourage visitors to report repair or service issues.

But the third section is and always will be an embarrassment to our country.  The worst part is the display of un-American cowardliness in trying to cover up or ignore unpleasant facts and history.

But nearly as reprehensible to me is the illogic, the supreme idiocy, of the request. Negative information about Americans? I just came from Reconstruction Era NHP and its detailing of state sanctioned extralegal violence. There is no sugarcoating that. At Fort Necessity National Battlefield (see my very long footnote below) George Washington, our #1 American, surrendered to the French. Super negative!

Dozens and dozens of NPS sites deal with themes of misbegotten battles, wayward policies, ways our country and leaders screwed up. Many of these NPS sites are in the former Confederacy, but plenty are not. Should we get rid of all of them? I am afraid too many Americans in this country might say yes.

I’ll stop there. Back to our regularly scheduled program and my visit to:

Arriving in Charleston, I rented a bike and rode around the mansions, parks, and wee restaurants of the charming downtown. Then I parked my bike at Fort Sumter (and Fort Moultrie) National Historical Park and, finally finding a ferry that operated on the day I was there, enjoyed the foggy, 40 minute boat ride to Fort Sumter at the mouth of Charleston Harbor.   

I enjoyed learning more about Fort Sumter to supplement my long ago high school classesMy junior year history teacher was from Georgia and she was not an Abraham Lincoln fan. We were aghast and amused. Wasn't Lincoln the greatest president ever? She dutifully called it the Civil War but also called it the 'War of Northern Aggression' more than once. . For example, when South Carolina militias fired on Fort Sumter, local citizens came out to watch the bombardment and were openly optimistic about defeating the Union. Outgunned and outmanned, the Union forces surrendered after less than 48 hours, so Charlestonians’ optimism was not unwarranted.

What I found even more interesting was that, stung by their initial defeat, the Union tried mightily to take back Fort Sumter throughout the war. Yet the Confederate garrison held out against perpetual bombardment, an attack by ironclad Union ships, and a failed Normandy-style amphibian invasion. For 2 years! Over the years, Union cannons blasted the fort walls into rubble but the Confederates inside never surrendered the Fort.²  

That is some serious tenacity. 

Positive? For the Confederacy, I suppose. But negative for the Union and its leaders who failed to take the fort back. Maybe I should report it.

Putting silly signs aside, here’s something great that happened at Fort Sumter. At the end of our visit, the park ranger invited anyone who wanted to assist in lowering and folding the 19th century era 33 star U.S. flag flying over the fort. A bunch of Americans and a few non-Americans enthusiastically took the chance to respectfully fold our flag.

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1. I would like to say I’ve never been to an NPS site that wasn’t worthwhile and that includes some pretty minor spots that I nevertheless enjoyed and learned something from.  But there are a handful where I deem the reason for their existence tenuous indeed.  At the top of that small handful I always list Fort Necessity National Battlefield (NB) in rural southwest Pennsylvania.  
   
   You haven’t heard of Fort Necessity?  Well, shame on you. It marks the site of a 1753 skirmish in the confusingly named and always hard to grasp French and Indian War.  The site of course talks the battle up, but it was not a key battle.  It was barely a battle.  And it wasn’t even a victory.  The British forces of mostly Virginia colonials ended up surrendering to the French, who promptly burned the short-lived Fort Necessity down.  
   
   There are no traces of the fort or much of anything else today.  As a result, a visitor can pretty much see everything there is to see in the visitor center and the re-created stockyard fort – a circle of long sticks in the woods –  in like 30 minutes.   Maybe an hour if you watch the movie and use the bathroom. 
   
   So why does the NPS bother to mark this site?  I can only assume it’s because the leader of the defeated British forces happened to be a young, up-and-coming Virginia colonial named George Washington.  Though I doubt that future “Father of the Country” Washington would like to be remembered for this event. 
   
   Here’s the kicker though, and why I put Fort Necessity at the top of my short “I hate to say it, but this NPS site is only worth a visit if you are literally driving by” list: Most NPS sites, and especially the smaller ones, don’t charge visitor fees. So a minor league NPS site like Fort Necessity NB would normally never charge a fee.  
   
   But imagine our surprise as we pulled up to visit – just so I could get a stamp, of course –  and the park ranger charged us $15 for our car, just like we would pay at Shenandoah NP,  Everglades NP,  Olympic NP – large, spectacular pieces of our country you could explore for days, if not weeks, if one so desired.  
   
   Of course I complained and (politely!) asked the nice ranger why we had to pay and, if so, why so much?  Wouldn’t $5 be plenty?  
   
   “Well, it’s a good value because your visitor pass is good for seven days.”
   
   Mrs. Anysecondnow and I still laugh about this. What an experience we passed up!  We could have found a motel somewhere in rural southwest PA and then come back tomorrow to spend another half-hour at Fort Necessity NB.  And then do it again the next day.  What a deal. 
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2. Though they never formally surrendered Fort Sumter to the Union, Confederate forces later withdrew from their positions with the approach of Sherman’s army in 1864. ︎

Did you know that San Antonio’s River Walk is the number one tourist attraction in Texas?  So said our River Walk boat guide.¹

Why is it #1?  I’m going to tell you why I think it is #1, but if you’re a proud Texas, maybe you should skip over the next two paragraphs.

So. Texas is not a particularly scenic state in my opinion.  Sorry!  There are some pretty parts, sure.  Hill country, the Gulf Coast, Big Bend, and others spots are nice enough.  But in my experience, much of Texas is flat, desert (and not the pretty kind with friendly Saguaro cacti waving at you) scrubby, and often all three.  And really hot.  It’s okay.  We can’t all be California, Hawaii, or coastal Maine.      

Given Texas’ lack of dramatic scenery and heat, it does not surprise me that a river lined with trees and vegetation, flowing through a high-spirited downtown area, and then near old Spanish missions, is the #1 Texas tourist attraction. 

Okay, Texans, pick back up here! 

Why Did We Choose San Antonio? 

Christmas lights along the River Walk, of course.  Mrs. Anysecondnow loves sparkling lights.  We had been in San Antonio before for an anniversary trip, but I knew she would love visiting again closer to the holidays with the lights.  Her birthday in early December + lights + warm temps = great celebration surprise trip.   

Does the River Walk deserves to be the 1# Texas tourist attraction?

Yes. Touristy as it may be in parts, the River Walk is a genuinely lovely, even charming, attraction. We got a hotel overlooking the river (more on that later) and Selena’s bridge with 30-second access to the stone paved River Walk paths on either side of the river.  

The river itself is about 20 feet below street level, decorated with giant cypress trees and vegetation, along with oh-so-cute arching bridges, fountains, mini-islands, and more.  Add in the Christmas lights, and some parts feel almost magical.  

The main River Walk area shows off restaurants and other attractions featuring right-along-the-water seating. These sections can get a bit noisy in the evenings, but within a few minutes in either direction the crowds and noise thin out and you soon have parts of the walk almost to yourselves.  

It’s also easy to pop back up to San Antonio’s main streets, glimpse the Alamo, find cheaper non-River Walk restaurants and sights, and then easily drop back down. 

I highly recommend continuing south on the River Walk, out of the downtown area. Here is where few tourists wander and you’ll mostly see locals strolling and exercising.  Outside the city landscape, the river quickly turns wilder. I spotted multiple varieties of egrets, cormorants, geese, and ducks.   

Going south along the same path also takes you through San Antonio Missions National Park. (The only UNESCO World Heritage Site in Texas!) I unlocked one of San Antonio’s BCycle bikeshare electric bikes and cycled the entire River Walk.  I’m kind of a completist, so I visited all four of the missions along the trail (the downtown Alamo counts as the fifth).  Even just one of these missions is worth the visit, and getting there on the path is more than half the fun.  

Honestly, the river scenery of this part of the River Walk combined with the Spanish missions makes this one of my favorite easy bike rides in the U.S. 

So you took one of those touristy River Walk boat rides?

Of course we did!  Sometimes the touristy thing is worth it. Plus, our hotel gave us free tickets (presumably for my wife’s birthday) but the 35-ish minute Go Rio boat tour is worth the $15 either way.  The boat captains/tour guides are fun and you get a nice river and city history while you float along the canal, waving at the pedestrians and diners. Do it. 

I’m tired of the flowing water, anything else to do besides the River Walk?

Oh yeah.  We also elevator’d to the top of the nearby Tower of the Americas (just barely worth the $20) and ambled through the slightly-north-of-downtown Japanese tea garden (definitely worth a visit, plus it’s free).  

There are several museums including the Briscoe Western Art Museum along the River Walk. I hear the zoo is pretty good as well.  

As good as all of those other sights are, if you are in San Antonio between March and November² on a weekend, you should try to see a rodeo.  Embrace your inner AmericanaTooltip content!  For me, once was enough, but I’m glad I did it. Tejas Rodeo Company puts on a good show and we enjoyed some pre-show Texas bbq and steak at their adjacent steakhouse.

 If you’ve got any adventurous kids between 4-7, you can even enter them in the rodeo’s  “Mutton Bustin’” competition.  Call me a whiny East Coast guy, but putting your kid on a sheep and telling them to hang on for a paying audience seems like one of those activities that might be labeled as abusive fifty years from now – or possibly right now in 2025? 

But it was super entertaining to watch and the kids seemed pretty enthusiastic, so maybe it’s fine? 

Let’s just move on . . .  

How about the food? 

You can probably get a bad meal in San Antonio but you would have to work at it.  Even a late evening snack at the local Chipotle hit the spot for Mrs. Anysecondnow.  

Our premier meal, the all-important birthday meal itself, took place riverside at Boudros.  Mrs. Anysecondnow proclaimed her coconut Gulf shrimp platter the best shrimp she’s ever tasted. I tasked them also and, yeah, they were great.  And Boudros even gave us a free piece of their lime chess pie for birthday dessert.   

San Antonio has no shortage of good TexMex, of course.  I enjoyed the just off the River Walk Poblanos for a cheap breakfast on two mornings, but it’s tough to go wrong with almost any Mexican place.  We also enjoyed a quick midday snack at Casa Rio which claims to be the first restaurant along the river back in 1946.

For something different, we tried the German deli spot Schilos (lotsa Germans settled in parts of Texas). I didn’t love my schnitzel sandwich as much as I hoped, but Schilos has been around since 1917, so maybe I got unlucky.  

What about the hotel? 

There are tons of hotels to choose from along and near the River Walk.  But for this trip I was targeting specific lodging – the Omni La Mansión Del Rio.  I had spotted the Spanish style balconies overlooking the river on a previous trip and decided “That’s where I want to stay next time.”  A river view room like the one we reserved costs more but it was well worth it.   

Wow, sounds like an overall great winter getaway.  Probably nice and warm, right?  

Welll . . . 

For me, enjoyable winter escapes from Virginia require two things – cold temps here at home in Virginia and warm temps at the destination.  Virginia did its part – highs were in the 30s all 3.5 days we were gone.  It even snowed an inch on day 3!  

It did not snow in San Antonio (thank goodness) but San Antonio underperformed its usual December 65 degree average high.  Our highs were 57, 51, and 50, with the first two days dropping some rain and wind on us.  I was thankful for some smudges of sun and blue sky on Day 3, but the sun and warmth didn’t really come out until Day 4 and at that point we were Lyft-ing to the airport for a noon flight home.  Of note, Mrs. Anysecondnow prefers cooler weather without direct sun, so the weather was perfect for her and it was even her birthday.  

So, actually, maybe the weather was just right?

1. Not surprisingly, the #1 Texas tourist attraction is a little tough to pin down. Trip Advisor seems to concur with our boat guide.  So does the (possibly biased) University of Texas-San Antonio.   Kind of.  They actually say the Alamo is #1, but the Alamo is next to the Riverwalk.  If you’re seeing one, you’re almost certainly seeing the other.  For what it’s worth, TripAdvisor separates out the Alamo at #3.  
   
   There does seem to be more agreement that San Antonio is Texas’ most popular city for tourists.   
   
   With all that, I’m pretty comfortable going with our boat guide’s assertion.
   ︎
2. We did the rodeo on a previous San Antonio trip since they don’t put on shows in December. ︎

So what is it?  It is the process of earning and then redeeming points or miles earned in various airline, hotel, and credit card loyalty programs for free (mostly) flights and hotel stays.  Frankly, it’s even broader than that to some degree, but this definition is sufficient.  (And to think it all kind of started back in May 1981 with American Airlines AAdvantage.) 

I discovered this world in 2010. This was a simpler time. I can’t recall the first website where I said to myself, “hey, wait a second, this sounds too good to be true!?”, but I soon started following and learning the trade from blogs such as  View From the Wing and then The Points Guy.  

Over the years, both of those sites morphed into something different and I no longer regularly read them.  My go to site became One Mile At A Time which has retained it’s “just a guy with a blog who loves traveling on points and writing about it” ethos. 

So, why bother with the work of earning and tracking points, and then finding flights or hotel stays where you can redeem those points?   Why not just buy the airline ticket, book the hotel night, rent the car and be done with it?  Just like in ye olden days.  

That’s a fair question. And I am completely sympathetic to anyone who doesn’t want the points hassle.  It’s easier to just book what you want and not try and find good deals on travel award redemptions.  Indeed, if I were wealthy enough, I’d probably skip the whole points/miles redemption thing myself. 

Here’s why I (and so many other people) do it.  I can enjoy travel experiences that I could never or would never normally pay for by redeeming points and miles that I earned for transactions I was already going to do –   money I was going to spend anyway.In other words, whenever I eat a kabob, watch Disney/Hulu, get a dishwasher, get a new bicycle tire at REI, etc., etc., I pay for that transaction using a credit card that earns points for every dollar I spend. 

Case in point: an international long-haul airline trip in business or first class: 

Before I got involved in the points and miles world, I had never flown business class. I’m not sure I had even seen a business class suite up in the front of a wide-body jet.  

It’s probably good I never saw an international business class seat because I would have been struck with serious envy.  A business class seat is a massive upgrade from a regular economy seat.  In terms of space, quality of food, service, sleeping comfort, privacy– absolutely everything is better.  Usually far better.  For me, a 6’4″ guy, it’s the difference between an airline flight where I am counting the hours until it’s over, knees often pressed into the seat in front of me, and a flight where I’m sad the hours are passing so quickly and that the experience will soon end.     

But I could almost never justify purchasing an international business class air ticket over an economy class ticket.  The different in price is many thousands of dollars.  For example, Turkish Airlines’ very pleasurable flat-seat business class one way between Washington DC and Istanbul goes for between $6-8K on May 5. That is 10x more expensive than the $730 fare for an economy seat on that date.   Yikes.  (Heck, I can do round trip economy for $1200.)

Enter points and miles.  Instead of me paying up to $8K for that seat, Turkish Airlines will charge me between 65000 miles and 135000 miles plus another $150 or so in fees.  Sweet.  

I actually took this flight last year as the first leg of a Central Asia and Caucasus trip.  The pleasure started with DC’s Turkish business lounge, then early boarding, Turkish’s superb catering and service, great in-flight movies, sleeping on a flat bed, and finally hanging out in their spectacular business class lounge in Istanbul for a few hours at the end of the flight.  

Of course, you’ve first got to earn those thousands of miles using credit cards.  Then you have to transfer the miles to Turkish Airline’s program.  Next you’ve got to actually find available award space on Turkish in order to redeem your accumulated miles, which can be frustratingly difficult.  And so on. 

All this can get eye-wateringly complex.  In addition to the info-blogs listed above, there are many other websites offering paid services to track down those sometimes elusive award seats.  One of the most popular is ExpertFlyer. If you’re going to get that sophisticated (and I usually don’t), though, you had better know your fare class codes.  Like I said, it’s a whole world out there. 

Fifteen years into this, I suppose I know more than most day-to-day travelers – I can pick through  F, J, and Y fare classes, for example, and can quickly identify even second tier airport codes like MSY, NAN, or SCL. But I start getting lost among the R, V, and A fare classes or lesser known airports like EYW (Key West).  In short, I’m nowhere near the level of many folks earning and redeeming miles out there.  But I know enough to have booked some pretty great trips. 

My first award redemption was three round trip economy tickets for the family between Washington DC and Honolulu – 40K United Mileage Plus miles each. Pretty exciting stuff for us but pretty tame compared to what was possible.¹

The first big deal business class redemption came two years later.  I knew more now and redeemed mostly US Airways (since subsumed into United Airlines) miles for three business class seats on UA from IAD-EWR-HKG, then traveled on cheap Asia discount airlines through Thailand and Malaysia, then headed home via an open jawOpen JawAn open jaw itinerary is when you head back to your origin (Washington DC, in our case) from a different airport than the one you arrived at. We arrived in Hong Kong but flew back from Singapore. ticket out of SIN-NRT-IAD.² 

Since then, I’ve landed in Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Greece, Uzbekistan, New Zealand, and Chile, among other places, feeling well rested after my relatively luxurious seat experience.  Some of these trips have been with my family, some alone. And those are just the major points redemptions.  

I’ve also used points dozens of times to book shorter domestic trips and many hotel stays – a favorite was five nights (fifth night free when you redeem for four nights!) with Mrs. Anysecondnow at the Ritz Carlton in Santiago, Chile.

The points world continues to evolve.  And get even more complicated.  It’s certainly more crowded. Perhaps there are too many enthusiasts chasing too few seats. 

Although I can routinely redeem miles for shorter domestic economy trips, it is unfortunately getting harder to find those holy grail international business long haul seats at reasonable redemption rates. That said, I’m still in the game, earning points on credit cards and looking for opportunities to transfer them to the right airline program for the right seat.

I’m looking to travel next to either Kenya or Tanzania (or Ethiopia?) on the way to my ultimate destination of Madagascar. Nothing available? Well, maybe it’s time to check out more of the Balkans, flying through Paris or Istanbul. I’ll find something, and when I do, getting there really will be half the fun.

1. Although I soon learned that I’d made an amateur mistake.  I had booked our round trip to both arrive and depart from Honolulu (HNL) in Oahu.  But by the end of our trip we were on the “Big Island”– not Oahu– and had to fly back to HNL to get home.  I should have booked an open jaw ticket (returning from a different airport than the one you arrived at) allowing us to fly back to Washington DC from Keahole (KOA) on the Big Island, instead of wasting half a day flying back to Oahu. ︎
2. We started in Washington DC Dulles Airport (IAD), then flew a short hop to Newark (EWR) where we boarded our long haul flight all the way to Hong Kong. (I did not tell my wife that we were flying business class. I knew I would have one shot at this. She had her neck pillow and was ready to endure 12 hours to Hong Kong in a small economy seat. When I pointed to her spacious seat, she was as amazed and surprised as I had hoped.) On return, we flew from Singapore (SIN) to Tokyo (NRT) back to DC (IAD). ︎