Where to stay in San Antonio: the best areas and hotels

The River Walk is the reason San Antonio feels like nowhere else in America. The river loops through the centre below street level, shaded by bald cypresses and crossed by little humpbacked bridges, with restaurants, bars and mariachi bands on both banks. It is touristy, certainly, and at its liveliest on the central bend, but walk five minutes in either direction and it turns leafy and peaceful. After dark, with the lights strung through the trees, it is lovely.

Hotels here open straight onto the water. Mokara is the most indulgent, built around a large spa with a rooftop pool overlooking the city. Omni La Mansión del Río is a Spanish colonial-style favourite with balconies above the river. Every room at the Hilton Palacio del Río has a balcony, and the Hotel Contessa is an all-suite, pet-friendly option on a quieter bend.

The Alamo is smaller than everyone expects and more moving than they anticipate: a pale limestone church and a walled garden in the middle of the city, where a few hundred defenders held out against the Mexican army in 1836. Around it, Houston Street and the nearby plazas hold the handsome old theatres, the Spanish Governor's Palace and San Fernando Cathedral, and the River Walk is a staircase away.

This is where to find San Antonio's heritage hotels. The Emily Morgan, a 1924 neo-Gothic tower, stands right beside the Alamo. The St. Anthony is the city's grand dame, with chandeliers, a rooftop pool and three bars. The Gunter has been welcoming guests for over a century, and the Hyatt Regency, three minutes' walk from the Alamo, links the plaza with the river below.

South-east of the Alamo, Hemisfair is the park left behind by the 1968 World's Fair, crowned by the 750-foot Tower of the Americas and now full of playgrounds, fountains and cafés. The convention centre sits beside it and the Alamodome just beyond. Keep walking south and you reach Southtown and the King William district, where Victorian mansions built by German merchants share the streets with galleries, coffee roasters and some of the city's best restaurants.

The Grand Hyatt rises directly above the River Walk next to the convention centre. The InterContinental, the newest hotel on the river, has an indoor-outdoor rooftop pool and bar. The Monarch is a design-led arrival with gardens, a spa and a rooftop restaurant, and the Kimpton Santo, built around a restored 1850s schoolhouse, bridges Downtown and Southtown.

North of Downtown the river grows quieter and the path, here called the Museum Reach, runs past public art and the San Antonio Museum of Art to the Pearl. Once a brewery, it is now a handsome district of restaurants, bakeries, bookshops and a busy weekend farmers' market, with a campus of the Culinary Institute of America to keep the cooking sharp. You can walk or take a river barge back to the centre.

Hotel Emma, in the brewery's 19th-century brewhouse, is the most distinctive hotel in Texas: all ironwork, old machinery and a library, with a pool on the roof and bikes to borrow. Thompson San Antonio, further down the river by the Tobin Center, brings a sleek spa and rooftop bar, and Sítio El Tropicano is a revived riverfront classic with the largest pool deck in the city.

San Antonio's north-west fringe is where the city meets the Texas Hill Country, and where it keeps its theme parks: SeaWorld to the west and Six Flags Fiesta Texas, set in an old quarry, to the north. The big resorts out here are holidays in themselves, and you can still be on the River Walk in about half an hour.

The JW Marriott Hill Country has a water park's worth of pools, a spa, golf and six restaurants. The Hyatt Regency Hill Country is a ranch-style favourite close to SeaWorld, with its own water park and 27 holes of golf. La Cantera overlooks the hills near Six Flags, with a children's camp and several pools, and Éilan is a Mediterranean-style hotel and spa nearby.

The airport is about nine miles north of Downtown, close enough that most visitors do not need an airport hotel. If you have a dawn flight, the Marriott has an outdoor pool and a Southern restaurant, the DoubleTree is under two miles from the terminal opposite North Star Mall, and the Crowne Plaza runs a free shuttle.

Fredericksburg, a little over an hour's drive north-west, was founded by German settlers in the 1840s and still serves schnitzel and strudel on its wide Main Street. These days it is also the capital of Texas wine country, ringed by tasting rooms and peach orchards, and home to the excellent National Museum of the Pacific War. In spring the roadsides turn blue with bluebonnets.

The Albert is the new boutique star, with a spa and an outdoor pool in the middle of town. The Inn Above Town Creek is a bed and breakfast in the historic district, the Lodge next door has a pool, and the Hampton Inn sits right on Main Street.