After Austin, thanks to the recommendations of a girl I met there, I decided to go to San Antonio. That’s a city I had never heard of before, people don’t really talk about it here in Europe. But I have to say it was a very pleasant surprise.

The first night wasn’t great at all. I had booked a cheap AirBnB, because I couldn’t find any hostel and I didn’t notice that it was so far away from downtown. My bus from Austin arrived late at the bus station, it was dark and the general atmosphere there felt pretty sketchy. I had to call an Uber to my place and only during the drive I realized how far it was.

The house was in a residential area and the procedure to check in was completely automatic, so I kind of had a hard time to understand how to enter the place. I was alone there, except for the owner’s dogs, which she had weirdly left in a room in the apartment. I was exhausted, so I went directly to my bedroom and fell asleep.

The morning after, when I tried to open the window I noticed it was blocked, I couldn’t open it to change some air. I thought it was probably due to the American obsession with ac, but I felt trapped, I felt like there was not enough oxygen. I then decided to go for a walk, but to my big surprise, I noticed there was no sidewalk outside! The street was only for cars. Once again, I was feeling trapped. 

Then, I decided to call an Uber and drive directly to downtown. The driver dropped me at the Riverwalk and that was the actual surprise! It was so pretty! 

The sun, the relaxed atmosphere, the beautiful lights, and colours, I fell in love with that. It might sound weird, coming from an Italian, but I liked this water city more than Venice! 

I had lunch at a bar while looking at the boats. Then I went for a little walk and ended up at a massive celebration of Día de los Muertos (it was Halloween), I later learned that it was the biggest Día de los Muertos in the US.

Even if I had lived together with two Mexicans, that was the first time I participated in that event. Compared to the Italian way to celebrate the dead, I thought that was on a completely different level. Colours, memories, cheerfulness, everyone seemed happy to honor and share the memory of their beloved ones, even if it was a sad story.

At the park, I met, in two different moments, two women of Mexicans origin. Erika and Carmen. Erika was a girl in her mid-thirties, who looked way younger, she showed me the city, and we had lunch together and talked about our lives. Carmen was a mother of six boys who decided to take me on a girl date because it had been a while since she last spent time with another woman. We went together to a Mexican restaurant and then she showed me the city in the car.

My trip to San Antonio was different, I felt very lonely at first, but then I found a welcoming city, full of surprises and interesting things to see. Together with New Orleans, it was definitely one of my favourite American cities so far.