Welcome to San Antonio, Texas!

CYFAR 2008 is now just days away. Along with all the stimulating professional opportunities that CYFAR always offers, this year’s venue has a lot to offer, too.

The conference hotel is the Hyatt Regency, San Antonio, located on the host city’s famous River Walk –  or Paseo del Rio – a  historic district. The River Walk is a great place to do just that – walk. It is a lush pedestrian-only walkway, one-level down from motorized traffic, and dotted with restaurants, art galleries and tourist attractions. The river runs for two and a half miles, and sightseeing boats run regularly.

The hotel’s atrium actually straddles an extension of the river that connects the hotel to the city’s other major tourist attraction, the Alamo. Today a museum, the Alamo was the site of a doomed 1836 resistance effort by Texas against Mexico during the Texas Revolution.

San Antonio, population about 1.4 million, is the seventh-largest US city but has a more compact feel than sprawling Dallas or Houston, due to its age (first seen by Europeans in 1593) and its city planning policies. The average temperatures in early May range from 65 to 80 degrees and it can be rainy.