If you are in San Antonio and want to get away from the tourists around the Alamo and the Riverwalk, you could do this:

1. Have breakfast at Ocho, a nice little place at the Hotel Havana. (But the waitress will ask you to not take photos with your camera. You can, she says, take as many as you want with a phone. When asked the difference, she says they don’t allow cameras “with lenses” because of “privacy concerns.” You decide it’s not worth the time to explain to her what a lens actually is. Or how a photo shot with a phone is kind of more likely to instantly show up on Facebook.)
2. Walk north along the Riverwalk. There won’t be any tourists, other than yourself and any companions you may have brought along. But there will be plenty of runners and walkers and dogs. It’s a nice walk. Some of the bridges have art under them, and there’s even a set of locks. It’s a very pleasant place.
3. Take some time at the Pearl Brewery, which hasn’t actually been a brewery in a long time. If it’s a Saturday, the part with the farmers market and retail shops will be pretty crowded, but the part where the sign says GOODS will be quiet. You can sit in the shade and read a book.
4. Or you can take in the stores and do a pretty fair amount of people watching at the market.
5. Or, you can find a chair on a grassy slope above the river and read that same book. (We are Water*, by Wally Lamb, was what I was reading, in case you wondered.)
6. After a while, you could go to La Gloria for some street tacos.
7. And then, you could get the water taxi to take you back toward downtown. The taxi’s only marginally faster than walking, but it does go through the locks, which is something that I don’t get to do in my day-to-day routine.

San Antonio, Texas
photographed 1.25.2014

* I agree with the review, and am glad that the book was on sale: it wouldn’t have been worth it otherwise.