I headed over to the convention centre to pick up my registration package for the SAS Global Forum.  On the way, I walked through La Villita Historic Arts Village, which was in full St. Patrick’s Day mode, and encountered a St. Patrick’s Day parade just starting to pass by.  I stopped to watch for a couple of minutes before continuing on my way.

The Convention Center is on the edge of HemisFair, which was built for the 1968 World’s Fair.  The park has a number of buildings, sculptures and other things, including the Tower of the Americas.

It also is home to a couple of geocaches.

Since I had my GPS with me, I checked to see whether there were any geocaches near by and was not terribly surprised to find there was one about 100m away from where I was and right near to doors into the Convention Center.  Following the arrow, I made my way to the cache, only to find two people making notes on a clipboard standing where the arrow was pointing.

I walked up and introduced myself to Dragonfire870.  They handed me the log and we clustered together for a couple of pictures.  It turns out they were  in town from Austin for a few days to do some geocaching.  I gave them a couple of my pathtags and we chatted for a couple of minutes before heading on our various ways.

From there, I found my way into the Convention Center and picked up my conference package from the conference registration people and checked out the conference facilities before heading off to see more of San Antonio.  The registration package consists of my name badge, tickets for the various sessions I’ll be attending, a pen, a lapel pin and some other conference info, along with a spiffy orange t-shirt.  I’m looking forward to the conference!

After picking up the lootconference package, I headed off to the Tower of the Americas, which was the centre piece of the 1968 World’s Fair.  There’s an impressive water garden at the base of the tower and this is where I found my second cache of the day.

Making my way back towards my hotel, I chatted with Officer Zavala, one of San Antonio’s finest.  He, like the other San Antonians (?) I’ve met, is very proud of his city — justifiably so in my opinion.  Tourism is the second biggest industry in San Antonio (the first being the military and the third being USAA, an insurance company specifically for people serving in the military) and he said that the Riverwalk is huge source of pride for San Antonio, not to mention a great tourism draw.  It took off about ten or fifteen years ago when a major chain restaurant opened its doors on the edge of the Riverwalk.  That opened the flood gates, so to speak, and now its shores are lined with all sorts of restaurants.

I wandered along it to one end and then made my way back to my hotel on the other side.  Swimming seemed in order so I spent some quality time pool-side before heading out to find two geocaches that I tried unsuccessfully to find yesterday.  Dragonfire870 had found both caches before we met up and had confirmed I was in the right place.  This time, I found both caches easily and didn’t even have to content with passing muggles.

Dinnertime was approaching so I made my way back to one of the restaurants I walked past earlier in the day, Paesanos Riverwalk.  On my way there, I stopped to see what a couple of people were peering at on one of the stones at the edge of the water.  It was one of the only bugs I’ve seen since arriving and a fairly impressive one at that.   Anyway, back to the restaurant.  Like every restaurant I passed on my way there, there was a line of people waiting to get in, but I didn’t have to wait that long.  I ordered the baked ravioli, which was worth the wait.  A slice of chocolate cake rounded things out nicely.

Thus endeth Day 2.  More pictures are in my gallery.