San Antonio is a city that never sleeps. Hordes of tourists, cameras at the ready, vie for space on noisy, downtown sidewalks near the busy River Walk. Visitors snap photos in front of Ripley’s Believe It or Not, Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks, or along a string of souvenir shops. 

Across the street at the Alamo Plaza, another throng mills around the San Antonio de Valero mission entrance. More intent on proving they saw a historic site, these tourists shoot selfies in front of “The Alamo,” the best known Texas landmark.

The flag of Spain flew over Texas once again recently at the Sixth Annual Corona Paella Challenge. The tribute to Spain’s national dish attracted more than 2,000 paella lovers and united award-winning, celebrity chefs and high school culinary arts students in a delectable competition.

A current art exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston brought back a flood of childhood memories. They were triggered by Dancers in the Classroom, a beautiful painting by Edgar Degas, the French Impressionist.

Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes painted fewer than a dozen portraits between 1820 and 1828, the year he died at 81. But the one that made headlines is Portrait of Mariano Goya, which was recently unveiled at the Meadows Museum in Dallas.

Americans have been hooked on pizza and pasta since Italian immigrants began dishing it out decades ago. That’s where many of us got our perception of Italian food.  Now, with the popularity of travel abroad, that perception is changing.