TRAVELERS
GUIDE TO HOUSTON
HOUSTON IN 48 HOURS
There’s never a dull moment in this town.
If you like museums, there’s plenty.
If shopping is your game, you’ve come
to the right place. Whatever else you do,
though, be sure to eat steak for dinner
HOUSTON IN 48 HOURS
RENT A CAR
The first things you should do after arriving at
the airport is take the shuttle over to the car
rental office. Houston, and its surroundings,
are best seen from behind the wheel. Weather
permitting, make it a convertible, drop the top
down and enjoy. (And wear a hat.)
If this is your first trip to Houston, or you only
have a day or two for sightseeing, take it easy
and stick to the Loop, aka Interstate 610. Yes,
there is a metro but Houston is built for cars,
and outside rush hour, you can get around fairly
easily.
Besides the tunnels that connect the skyscrapers downtown, and the restaurants and
stores underneath, it’s the Museum District that
is the pride of Houston.
THE MUSEUMS AND ‘THE MAN’
There are 19 museums within a 2km radius
of the beautiful Mecom Fountain, including
the Contemporary Arts Museum, Children’s
Museum, Center for Photography and Museum
of Natural Science. You can walk around the
Museum District, but just to get to the other side
of the Mecom Fountain means getting back into
your car and driving a few hundred meters to the
Hermann Park parking lot.
A bronze Sam Houston welcomes you to the
city that bears his name, and from there you can
walk through the park, admire the reflection
pool, the pioneer memorial obelisk, rent a
paddle boat, or find a stone seat by the pond and
HOUSTON IN 48 HOURS
just relax.
The Houston Zoo is also inside the park, as is
the 90-year-old Hermann Park golf course, the
first desegregated golf course in America.
www.hermannpark.org
www.houstonzoo.org
www.aquariumrestaurants.com
www.houstonmuseumdistrict.org
THE ART DISTRICT
A few minutes drive from the park and the
Museum District on the other side of the Southwest Freeway, you’ll hit Montrose, aka the Arts
District and “Heart of Houston” for its colorful
street life, restaurants, and arty vibe.
In the middle of Montrose Boulevard, for example, just outside Inversion Coffee House, there’s
a 60 meter-long snake-like art installation made
of recycled wood. Inversion, in turn, takes its
name from an installation by Dan Havel and
Dean Ruck of a collapsed house that has since
been demolished.
Houstonians consider Montrose to be the city’s
coolest neighborhood, but you won’t see them
walking around it – they take the car.
www.inversioncoffeehouse.com
SPEND BIG
So what about the shopping? Well, this is
Houston, Texas, and everything in Texas is big.
Galleria at the west end of the Loop has almost
400 stores making it the largest mall in Texas,
the eighth largest in America, and it’s still grow-
HOUSTON IN 48 HOURS
ing. There’s something for everybody here with
Texas’ only Prada store rubbing shoulders with
Zara. There’s also a skating rink, two hotels, and
dozens of restaurants. In fact, the Galleria is a
tourist attraction in itself, with almost 30 million
annual visitors.
BOOK SHOPPING
There’s only one thing you can’t find at Galleria:
books. But there’s no need to panic. Houston is
brimming with excellent bookstores and not just
the usual chains. Brezos Books on Bizzonette
is a boutique store with great service that oozes
love for books. Almost across the street, within
walking distance in fact, is Murder by the Book,
which specializes in crime novels, mysteries and
thrillers… and you feel it the second you step
inside the store.
www.brazosbookstore.com
www.murderbooks.com
BIG STEAKS
Round off the day with a Texas-size steak at
Taste of Texas. It’s worth making a reservation
since there can be a long line at the door, but on
the plus side they will give you a Dr Pepper while
you wait. Make it one, though. The largest steak
is about 4cm thick and weighs 900g.
www.tasteoftexas.com
HOUSTON IN 72 HOURS
If you’re lucky enough to have some more time
to explore Houston – you can do all this
THE SPACE TRIP
No trip to Houston would be complete without
a trip to Johnson Space Center, and while the
center is only a 45 minute drive south of the city,
depending on the traffic, it would be foolish to
rush your visit.
The first sight that greets you is a replica
space shuttle christened the Independence
atop a Boeing 747 transporter, but it’s inside the
building that other worlds present themselves.
You can experience gravity on Mars, learn about
Nasa missions, send the kids to the Angry Birds
Space playground, and buy space ice cream at
the souvenir store. And on Fridays, you can book
a lunch with an astronaut, and spend an hour
eating earth food and talking about all things
space. The lunch costs $50 for adults, $25 for
children aged 4-11.
You can float around here for hours, but don’t
miss the tour of the campus – and it is a campus,
built just like one to facilitate innovation inside
and between the different buildings.
Building 9 is the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility
used for astronaut training and systems familiarization.
Building 17 is the Space Food Systems Laboratory. With manned missions to Mars on the
horizon, the food has to last without refrigeration for up to three years.
Building 32 is the Space Environment Simula-
HOUSTON IN 72 HOURS
tion Laboratory.
And of course there’s the Christopher C. Kraft
Jr. Mission Control Center, the mission control
center for the Apollo program now tracking the
International Space Station and preparing for
the launch in December of Orion. One wall is
filled with shields for every completed mission;
the other wall is for those “always on a mission.”
The three that didn’t return home are Apollo 1,
Columbia, and Challenger.
As the tour guide tells the group entering
mission control: “This isn’t a theme park, this is
the real thing.”
www.spacecenter.org
THE WATERFRONT
Skip the McDonald’s next to the space center
entrance and take a left instead, driving another
15 minutes to the Kemah Boardwalk. You could
easily spend the rest of the day at the waterfront
restaurants, amusements, and stores. A Houston city pass will get you into the space center,
Kemah Boardwalk, the aquarium, Museum of
Natural Science and the Children’s Museum (or
Museum of Fine Arts) for $50.
www.kemahboardwalk.com
THE BEACH
If you like driving and the weather is nice keep
driving south to Galveston Island, a barrier island just 43km long and 5km wide, with a quaint
downtown calling to mind the Wild West. Driving
along the seawall with its pretty shops on one
HOUSTON IN 72 HOURS
side, the beach on the other and offshore oil rigs
way out to sea, transports you to another world.
Have a seafood lunch at Fisherman’s Wharf,
perhaps washed down with a bottle of Saint
Arnold beer, and then hit the town, stopping by
the Offshore Drilling museum on your way to
the beach to plot your route back to Houston.
Tanger Outlets, for example, at the halfway
point, has almost 100 stores crying out for your
custom.
www.fishermanswharfgalveston.com
www.tangeroutlet.com/houston/
www.oceanstaroec.com
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to
go to the moon in this decade and do the other
things, not because they are easy, but because
they are hard…”
- John F. Kennedy’s moon speech at Rice
University, Houston.
SAINT ARNOLD TOURS
Visit a local brewery in downtown Houston.
Monday through Friday the taps are open between 2pm and 4.15pm; tours start at 3.30pm.
On Saturdays tours start at noon, 1pm and 2pm.
Admission: $10, including souvenir glass.
Text: Risto Pakarinen