Earlier this week, I took a four-day trip to Houston to meet up with some people at NASA. My roommate's family lives there and was kind enough to let me stay with them and show me around the city!
I've heard a lot of people ask, "other than NASA, what do you even do in Houston?" I didn't know either. But between museums and restaurants and parks and, yes, NASA, there's a ton to do! You'll absolutely need a car, though, because this city is huge!
Evelyn's Park
We started off by grabbing lunch and walking around at Evelyn's Park in Bellaire. I unfortunately, did not grab any photos this first day, but imagine this: a sunny day, 70 degrees in January, a green field, a yellow two-story shiplap house with lights strung across a patio of picnic tables, dogs and kids running wild. This is Evelyn's Park. The yellow building is a restaurant called Betsy's, which has INCREDIBLE pizzas and salads, along with all sorts of soups, sandwiches, and drinks. There's some indoor seating, but the outdoor tables are the main attraction. My friend got a pizza and I ordered a pesto bowl, which had mushrooms, brown rice, kale, pesto, and pine nuts, and was one of the better salads I've had before, and perfect for such a sweet summer-esque day! After lunch we wandered around the park, admiring the more newly-planted oak trees and wondering at how big they will be someday. For now, their skinny branches highlight the enormity of the bright blue Texas sky. We walked through an Alice and Wonderland statue area, where kids climbed on the statues like that was their purpose all along, and through all sorts of native Texas plants. The central area of the park had a green space where owners played catch with their dogs, and a hill boasted two enormous slides that kids raced each other down. It was the kind of park you could take anyone from your best friend, boyfriend, or grandmother, and they would love it.
Sunset at Rice's James Turrell Skyspace
We drove over to Rice University that night to see an art/architecture structure there during sunset. Parking at the stadium, we walked through campus until we came to a confusing man-made sloped hill with stairs leading up to a covered square area with concrete bench seating. At first, we passed through the doorway between the two sets of stairs in the hill, coming to a room in the middle of the hill that looked up at the sky through a square hole in the roof. The room was completely silent, with stone chairs placed around. It was eerie, so we left and ascended to the top of the hill, sitting there instead. As the sun set, lights inlaid in the walls reflected on the white surface of the ceiling, preceding the colors of the sun and fading in the same order as the sunset would in just a few minutes. The structure is next to Rice's music school, and the way the light show was offset from the actual progression of lights in the sky reminded me of a rondo. We watched the sky fade from bright blue to pink and orange and a stunning teal that I'd never taken the time to appreciate before. I left with a new comprehension of just how many colors the sunset holds.
River Oaks Christmas Lights
Since it was just New Year's, a lot of the folks in the River Oaks neighborhood still had their Christmas lights up. We drove through, past beautiful grand houses with incredible lights decorating their lawns and trees. We saw a few other cars doing exactly the same thing, because who doesn't love Christmas lights?? (Fun fact- NASA did a study and found that the world gets 5-10% brighter around the holidays!)
Snooze AM Eatery
This is a chain brunch restaurant, but we went one morning while we were in Houston. I think there are two locations in the city, if not more! They serve strange combinations of brunch food, like pineapple pancakes. Unconventional? Yes. Amazing? Also yes. Snooze also was dedicated to being eco-friendly and community-centered, which brought me a whole lot of happiness (as did the pancakes. Because, really, who doesn't love new ways to enjoy breakfast?)
Hermann Park
Right in the museum district is a giant park. We didn't see all of it, but what we did see was absolutely beautiful, and I did actually take pictures here! Walking in, you see this beautiful reflective pool with water cascading down a winding hill:
We explored a rose garden to the left of that area and saw what looked like a Chinese-style pagoda. It had no sign explaining it, but we marveled at the beautiful colors and careful painting. Heading back to the rose garden, we wandered through red, pink, and white rose arches, saw some sculptures, and then decided to climb the giant hill. The top was a great lookout point and had some benches to sit and enjoy the view.
The exit of the park had different statues of various leaders from around the world, donated by different countries and Houston's sister cities. That side also held a family garden, where we looked at flourishing carrots, lettuce, herbs, and tomatoes, among many other plants. I would have loved to stay longer just to see what all they were growing! The park was expansive and peaceful.
Houston Museum of Natural Science
Right across from Hermann Park is the Houston Museum of Natural Science. We bought something called a City Pass, which gives you entrance to five different museums around Houston: NASA's Space Center Houston, the natural science museum, the zoo, the aquarium, and the children's museum. Since a lot of the museums are close together, you can do several in one day, although we got a later start than we intended because of brunch!
This is hands down one of THE coolest science museums I've been to! I'm not sure how many hours we actually spent there, but we could have easily spent more. We started by passing by the giant moon exhibit and going upstairs to the gem hall, where we were amazed by the variety of unfinished gemstones from around the world. I could have easily spent forever there! That area also has an incredible exhibit for Faberge pieces. We learned a lot about Russian history and saw beautifully ornate jewelry (and several Faberge eggs.) Then we walked through the jewel vault, which was the display of finished gemstones.
Outside that was a similar display of something just as crazy- seashells from around the world, including the world's largest of one specific kind of seashell (I forget what it was called, but it was probably about a foot long, no joke.) Colors of shells and all sorts of sizes decorated the walls.
We saw an exhibit called Cabinet of Curiosities, which was a tribute to collectors of long ago who lived in a world more seemingly exotic than ours. Their collected items- kangaroo and zebra skins, along with other treasures, were the feature of this exhibit. My friend explained that a whale skeleton on the ceiling had been donated to the museum right after the whale had died on the beach, so when they came to collect it, they got more than just the skeleton and had some cleanup to do first! The drawers of all the cabinets opened, and anyone could pull them out and look at what was inside.
We saw the Egypt exhibit, which had three mummies, and the Hall of the Americas, where we saw the museum's most valuable object: a parrot feather cloak. We went fairly quickly through these, but it would not have been hard to spend a long time reading all the signs. We saw the energy exhibit on the fourth floor and then the dinosaurs on the first. This museum is a must-see in Houston!
Cockrell Butterfly Center
Another must-see within the museum is the Cockrell Butterfly Center. You can buy tickets when you walk into the museum- they are $8 for adults. I would recommend it, because this was one of my favorite parts of the museum! We mostly skipped the entomology exhibit before entering the butterfly garden, in part because we were excited to see butterflies and in part because there were giant cockroaches on display. But if that's your thing, there are lots of crazy bugs to see there.
Walking into the butterfly garden felt like entering some secret rainforest. It was humid, the air sticky with moisture and bright with color. Plants grew everywhere, and sunlight streamed in through a windowed dome that made up the enclosure. I expected to hear monkeys hooting or birds chirping but instead was greeted by the delighted chatter of children and the rush of a waterfall. Butterflies flew around like birds and landed on fruit bowls set up around the enclosure. The center started high and wound down to the ground floor, and you could see tall trees growing up the whole thing. It got cooler as you went down. I was amazed to think that nowhere else in the world was like this, where butterflies flew so abundantly and freely with no fear of predators. I watched them eat and got right up to look at their beautiful wings. We saw one enormous black butterfly that flapped its top two wings quickly, like a hummingbird, and stabilized itself with its bottom two. Others looked like leaves; others had translucent wings. Some had numbers on stickers on their wings as part of a longevity study the center was doing; if you saw one you could help the scientists understand butterfly life spans with an Instagram tag. We saw enormous white butterflies and black ones with rainbow edgings. They were breathtaking.
Space Center Houston
Lastly, no trip to Houston (especially not for me) would be complete without a voyage out to Space Center Houston. Having been a few times (like for High School Aerospace Scholars), and knowing I'll probably go again soon, I'll keep this section relatively short!
Space Center Houston is the visitor part of Johnson Space Center. It's actually not run by NASA, but it does give visitors the chance to go to Mission Control and to Building 9, the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility where astronauts train for Space Station missions. The museum itself has exhibits on the space station, Mars, and the most amazing part that is also the most overlooked- the hall that leads through every manned space program from the beginning to Shuttle. There's a real Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsule in there, along with a Skylab space station mock-up you can walk through, a lunar lab and a moon rock you can touch, and a space shuttle (test vehicle) outside that you can go in! They had a lunar lander in the museum as well that let you see all the switches, and as I placed my hands on the railing and looked inside, I had a sudden memory of myself doing the exact same thing my sophomore year of high school, knowing so little about aerospace then and having no idea of what I wanted to do other than this newfound realization that I wanted to be an astronaut. I remember almost crying then, looking at the buttons astronauts pushed to land on the moon, and felt that star-struck wonder again. This is a part of the museum that everyone misses, but it is, I think, the most important part.
Houston is an exciting (and enormous) city with tons to explore, and we didn't even hit half of it! I look forward to going again and seeing more of the attractions I missed this time. But between the science museum, Rice, NASA, and a ton of parks, I felt happy to have a pretty good overview of the city and some fun things to do!
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