The annual RI Convention is an impressive event wherever it's held. But when the host city is as colorful and unique as San Antonio, Texas, USA, it promises to be a veritable extravaganza. Indeed, while your brain tells you that you're in the United States, your senses may well insist otherwise. Tantalizing aromas of Mexican cooking fill the air, and mariachi rhythms emanate from street corners and from bandstands along the famous River Walk.
Hospitable locals speak with distinctive dialects, usually a Texas drawl or a Spanish accent.
The Texas state flag. Even the original design of the city, with its wealth of open spaces and pedestrian-friendly plazas, still conveys the feeling of another time and place. The history of San Antonio and Texas is just as old, but traces its roots to the Spanish Empire, which spread northward from Mexico in the early 1700s. Many convention-goers will want to find time to visit the old Spanish missions south of town, which are still active church parishes. Of course, the most famous of the missions is the Alamo, where a key battle against the Mexican army was fought during the Texas Revolution of 1836.