San Antonio, TXMar 15, 2011
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Brackenridge Park, San Antonio - Japenese Tea Garden
Blooming trees in Japanese Garden
Bird in Japanese Tea Garden
| Since we saw the Riverwalk and the Alamo on our last trip to San Antonio, and we learned this week is Spring Break for apparently all of Texas and they all visited either San Antonio or Austin, we decided to stay away from downtown and the riverwalk areas today. Instead, we took the bikes to Brackenridge Park - San Antonio's version of Central Park. This city park is huge with golf, fishing, bike paths, hiking trails, paddle boating, a train, zoo, museums, etc. We parked shortly after driving into the park and rode our bikes around the park and to the Japanese Tea Gardens. The Japanese Tea Gardens was small with a 60 foot waterfall, several ponds and stone walkways and bridges. It was built in an abandoned rock quarry in 1919 and operated by a Japanese family until World War II when they were asked to leave the gardens due to anti-Japanese sentiment. The gardens were renamed Chinese Tea Gardens and a Chinese-American family ran it for several years. In the mid-80s it was finally renamed Japanese Tea Gardens. The Gardens eventually became a part of Brackenridge Park and is now being restored. So, we weren't able to walk on some of the stone bridges, but we still enjoyed the blooming trees, fish and other plants. The bike ride through the park with very pretty with huge old trees and red buds flowering. The city is working on the bike paths so in a few areas we had to jump over to city streets, but at least there was either a good sidewalk or a bike path divided from the street by concrete blocks. |
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