Texas
The Holiday Season in San Antonio: Lighting Up the River Walk
Program No. 22273RJ
Celebrate the holidays in San Antonio, where you’ll enjoy the festively lit Historic District, view the lights of the River Walk and revel in lectures and excursions to iconic sites.
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6 days
5 nights
10 meals
5B 2L 3D
1
Check-in, Registration, Orientation, Welcome Dinner
San Antonio, Texas
2
San Antonio History, River Walk, Downtown, Barge Ride
San Antonio, Texas
3
LBJ Lecture, Mexican Market, Free Afternoon & Evening
San Antonio, Texas
4
Fredericksburg, LBJ Ranch, Holiday Lights
San Antonio, Texas
5
Spanish Missions, Historic District, Farewell Dinner
San Antonio, Texas
6
Program Concludes
San Antonio, Texas
At a Glance
View the River Walk ablaze with millions of lights while journeying along the river. Through expert-led visits to San Antonio’s iconic historical sites such as the Alamo and The King William District and explorations of the vibrant and lively El Mercado and La Villita areas, you will welcome a greater perspective and understanding of this fascinating city in its most beautiful time of the year.
Activity Level
Keep the Pace
For people who enjoy walking as much as two miles a day, to explore historic neighborhoods or trails. Standing in a museum for up to 2-3 hours. Ability to go up and down stairs each day.
Best of all, you’ll…
- Enjoy historic city sights and a historic neighborhood decorated for the holidays.
- Experience the San Fernando Cathedral, built in 1731 as a center for city life.
- Learn about the life of LBJ on a day-long field trip to the Texas Hill Country, admiring the sparkling holiday lights in small Texas towns along the way.
General Notes
Enjoy lights and luminarias along the river walk throughout the holiday season. On December dates, there will also be carolers on the river barges.
Featured Expert
All trip experts
KT Cockerell
KT Cockerell, a native Texan, loves to share colorful Texas history with visitors. She enjoys the adventure of discovery while leading groups and in her own personal travels as well. She has traveled extensively throughout Europe and locally. KT has been involved with the travel industry for over 20 years. KT and her husband Alan enjoy living in the small rural town of Seguin, where they have raised their four daughters.
Please note: This expert may not be available for every date of this program.
Mary Brennan
View biography
Mary Brennan is dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Texas State University. She has exhaustively researched conservative politics in America and has penned a number of books related to the subject, including "Wives, Mothers, and the Red Menace" that evolved from her curiosity about Joe McCarthy’s wife, and "Pat Nixon: Embattled First Lady." Mary has appeared on numerous radio and TV shows, including CNN’s "The Sixties" and CSPAN's "First Ladies: Influence and Image."
KT Cockerell
View biography
KT Cockerell, a native Texan, loves to share colorful Texas history with visitors. She enjoys the adventure of discovery while leading groups and in her own personal travels as well. She has traveled extensively throughout Europe and locally. KT has been involved with the travel industry for over 20 years. KT and her husband Alan enjoy living in the small rural town of Seguin, where they have raised their four daughters.
Ken Erfurth
View biography
Ken Erfurth is a life-long resident of San Antonio whose interest in the region’s history, culture, and architecture began at an early age. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Houston and is a registered architect. He has been conducting educational adventures in San Antonio for various groups for over 20 years. In recent years, Ken has used photography to document the unique visual aspects of his native city and surrounding area. His images have been exhibited and published in multiple forums.
Mary Muenster
View biography
Mary Muenster is a native Texan who has lived in San Antonio since 1992. After working for Pan American World Airways as an International Flight Attendant, she moved to San Antonio to teach at one of the city’s top public high schools where she also served as the Social Studies Department Chair. Mary's passion for geography — physical and cultural — expanded beyond classroom walls and is what attracted her to settle down in the Alamo City. She has visited more than 50 countries on six continents.
Suggested Reading List
(10 books)
Visit the Road Scholar Bookshop
You can find many of the books we recommend at the Road Scholar store on bookshop.org, a website that supports local bookstores.
The Holiday Season in San Antonio: Lighting Up the River Walk
Program Number: 22273
Gone to Texas, a History of the Lone Star State
Gone to Texas engagingly tells the story of the Lone Star State, from the arrival of humans in the Panhandle more than 10,000 years ago to the opening of the twenty-first century. Focusing on the state's successive waves of immigrants, the book offers an inclusive view of the vast array of Texans who, often in conflict with each other and always in a struggle with the land, created a history and an idea of Texas.
Big, Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas
Written by a great story teller, this readable, monumental work is exactly what the title implies: a comprehensive history of Texas complete with wonderful historic photographs and a focus on the stories of individual people. Not for the fainthearted, the time invested in reading this is well-spent. Actually, the book is so readable that devouring it is a pleasure. It has been described as “a must read for Texas aficionados.”
The Alamo Remembered, Tejano Accounts & Perspectives
Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth
Reviled by some and applauded by others, this controversial popular history focuses on factors related to the history of the Alamo. A saucy, journalistic-style read, it provides a perspective on how Texans think, information about the current redesign of Alamo Plaza, and a great bibliography for further study.
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History
S. C. Gwynne’s Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.
As Texas Goes: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda
Gail Collins, the best-selling author and columnist for the New York Times, visited Texas and discovered that in Texas, where Bush, Cheney, Rove, & Perry had created a conservative political agenda that is now sweeping the country and defining our national identity. Through its vigorous support of banking deregulation, lax environmental standards, and draconian tax cuts, through its fierce championing of states rights, gun ownership, and, of course, sexual abstinence, Texas, with Governor Rick Perry’s presidential ambitions, has become the bellwether of a far-reaching national movement that continues to have profound social and economic consequences for us all. Like it or not, as Texas goes, so goes the nation.
From a Limestone Ledge: Some Essays and Other Ruminations about Country Life in Texas
Some of the most sensible, genial prose west of the Mississippi. A kind of sequel to Hard Scrabble-recounting more about his twenty years of quiet combat with the forces of nature.
Friedrichsburg: Colony of the German Furstenverein
Texas, My Texas: Musings of the Rambling Boy
In a collection of essays about Texas gathered from his West Texas newspaper column, Lonn Taylor traverses the very best of Texas geography, Texas history, and Texas personalities. In a state so famous for its pride, Taylor manages to write a very honest, witty, and wise book about Texas past and Texas present.
Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream: The Most Revealing Portrait of a President and Presidential Power Ever Written
Widely praised and enormously popular, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream is a work of biography like few others. With uncanny insight and a richly engrossing style, the author renders LBJ in all his vibrant, conflicted humanity.