Trip Photos: The San Antonio Missions

A few miles south of San Antonio are four historic missions and their churches. We visited three of them.

Mission San José
This is by far the largest and most spectacular of the missions.



Our tour guide was a Mexican-American gentleman named Danny Cantu. As I told him afterwards, his was the best, most informative tour I've ever been on. It was beyond superb!








Danny explained to us in depth how the mission was set up by the Catholic Church to encourage Native Indians in the area to come inside the protective walls and learn how to live their lives in a more modern way. In exchange, they had to convert to Christianity and to follow the rules set by the local priest.









Mission San Juan








Mission Espada