Old San Antone

One of these days I'll get back to real woodworking, but I was forced by family pressure to go on vacation. We toured San Antonio and the nearby Central Texas Hill Country. San Antonio is most famous for the Alamo, the Riverwalk area and the old Missions. It did not disappoint. Out in the Hill Country, we were most impressed by a little town called Fredricksburg, which is a must see. It is full of very high class craft shops, German restaurants and notably, several museums dedicated to the war in the Pacific in WWII. It turns out that Fredricksburg is the home of Admiral Nimitz, and the local City Fathers play that up to the max.


Here's SWMBO #1 and 2 standing on one of the bridges on the Riverwalk. This one is now called the J. Lo. bridge because a scene of Jennifer Lopez was shot here for the movie "Selena".



Below is a shot of one of the magnificent carved doors at one of the Missions in San Antone. These missions were built in the late 1600's and early 1700's. I have no idea if this door is original or a late replacement.


And last, this is a shot of one of the unusual hinges they used on all their doors at the missions. You can see it is made from two rods bent over each other, pushed through a hole in the door frame and bent back like a brass split pin in a binder. I have no idea why this is a good way to build a hinge. Perhaps because it doesn't require screws, which might have been difficult to make in a frontier environment.