Houston – Vacation and Tour in the NASA City

Houston is the fourth largest city in the USA, but unlike its three larger peers (New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago), Houston lacks a captivating downtown. What it lacks in a central hub, Houston makes up for with a variety of great attractions such as excellent museums, parks full of activities, and especially the Space Center complex, NASA's official visitor center and one of the most unique spots in all of Texas. Just south of Houston, on the charming coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, is the city of Galveston, which was once the commercial center of Texas and was destroyed by a hurricane in 1900. Today, it is a lively and fun vacation city with a wide range of tourist attractions.

How many days are needed for a trip to Houston?

For a trip to Houston, you need two days of touring, including downtown, the Space Center, and Galveston.

For a trip to Houston, it's advisable to find accommodation in the city or a resort hotel in Galveston.

Click here to check availability and prices for beach hotels in Galveston…

Click here to find accommodation in Houston hotels…

Must-see and do in Houston?

• Moon capsules at the Space Center Houston
• Relax at Seawall Boulevard and Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier
• Hang out in the Montrose district
• Masterpieces at The Menil Collection and the stunning Rothko Chapel
• A fun day with the kids at Hermann Park
• More masterpieces at The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• The charming gardens of Bayou Bend
• The attractions at Moody Gardens in Galveston
• Astros or Rockets games in downtown Houston

Click here to purchase online tickets (no line) for the Space Center in Houston…

Click here to buy the Houston CityPASS including entry to the Space Center…

What is Houston?

Houston is the largest city in Texas, with almost two and a half million residents. In terms of population size, it ranks as the fourth largest city in the USA, following the three giants – New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. Regarding the metropolitan area, Houston is the second-largest in Texas after the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, with nearly seven and a half million people living in the metro area, making it the fifth largest in the entire USA. The Houston metropolitan area completes the densely populated region of central Texas from the east, as the southeastern tip of the triangle with Dallas and San Antonio.

Click here for a day trip from Houston to Galveston (including attractions in Houston)…

• The city is located along the banks of the Buffalo Bayou River, which is more a groundwater drainage than a river. This drainage creates a slowly moving river in the plain, which floods the surrounding area to an almost marsh-like condition.
• The river flows through the city and empties into the Gulf of Mexico at Trinity Bay, a huge lagoon that, along with Galveston Bay, is blocked by large, populated barrier islands. The city of Galveston stretches across these islands, which was one of the most important cities in Texas until it was devastated by a formidable hurricane.

Houston was founded in 1836, right at the tail end of the Texas Revolution. It's named after General Sam Houston, who commanded the rebels in the Battle of San Jacinto, following the heroic loss at the Battle of the Alamo in San Antonio. This battle decisively won the war for the short-lived independence of Texas, before it joined the Union about nine years later.

• In the early 20th century, Houston was a fairly sleepy town, overshadowed by Galveston, which was then the largest and most important city in Texas, with all state trade funneled through its port.
• Everything changed with the deadly hurricane of 1900 that struck in early September, killing about a quarter of the population. It took the city decades to recover from the blow, while Houston became the economic hub of Texas, alongside the oil discoveries in the state.
• Today, Galveston is a popular vacation city, but it lost its central position to its slightly more inland neighbor, keeping it safer from the dangerous gulf.

Click here to obtain a free admission pass to the Menil Collection Museum…

After World War II, Texas became an important medical center, and the city concentrated on high-tech industries. Based on this, NASA's space center was established in the city's southeast outskirts, becoming the American space company's mother base. Today, the city is associated with the space center and the catchphrase – “Houston, we've had a problem” (related to the Apollo 13 space mission). The space center oversees all American space activity, although rocket launches are at Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Click here for a tour of all Houston's main sites…

Houston and Galveston Map

How to get to Houston?

How to fly to Houston?

George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) – Houston's international airport is one of the largest in the USA and serves as a major hub for United Airlines. It connects with all major airports in the USA, Canada, and Mexico, as well as numerous regional airports in the central and western United States. The airport also has flights from key airports in Europe, the Far East, and the Middle East.

The airport is located 40 kilometers north of downtown Houston, just a 25-minute drive from the city center. You can reach downtown with bus number 102. With its five terminals, it's one of the largest airports in the USA by area. It's relatively new, built after Hobby Airport in the city center became too small for Texas's massive passenger traffic.

Click here to find attractive flight deals to Houston…

William P. Hobby International Airport (HOU) – Houston's historic airport is located in the southeastern part of the city, just a short drive from downtown. It was the main airport until the massive northern airport opened in 1969. This airport serves as a hub for Southwest Airlines, connecting Houston with all major Texas airports, the southern US, and the Midwest.

How to get to Houston by car?

Houston is situated on the almost mythical route of Highway 10, the southern USA's highway. The road runs from Jacksonville in Florida to Los Angeles, connecting all the southern cities. Highway 10 links Houston with San Antonio to the west, while Highway 45 connects the city to the Dallas metropolitan area in the north. Highway 45 is the main artery of the metropolis, heading south to Texas City and Galveston, which are part of the metropolitan area.

Click here for all the info on car rental in the USA + useful tips and significant discounts…

When is the best time to visit Houston?

Houston has a southern climate like the rest of southeastern Texas, meaning blistering hot summers and pleasantly mild winters. Being close to the Gulf of Mexico, Houston gets much more rain than its two neighbor cities, San Antonio and Dallas, including tropical afternoon showers breaking the humidity. Summers in Houston can be quite tough with intense heat and pretty horrific humidity.

• The best season to visit Houston is winter. The winter in Houston is pleasant to cool, with plenty of sunny days and relatively few rainy days compared to other seasons.
• The late spring and fall months in Houston are relatively rainy, but it's usually followed by sunshine. May and October are the rainiest months, and during these times, it might not be the best idea to visit the city.
• Summers in Houston are hot, sunny, and humid, quite similar to Florida's weather. Due to its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico, the city is also at risk for hurricanes.

Click here for a culinary tour of all of Houston's food gems…

Everything You Need to Know About Lodging in Houston

The lodging character in the Houston metro area is divided into three types:

1. Resort hotels on the Galveston coastline
2. Urban hotels in the heart of Houston
3. Motels along the main routes of the city and metropolis

Click here to find accommodation in Galveston's resorts and beach hotels…

The Galveston coastline is one of the most popular vacation destinations in the southern USA. Located on the Gulf of Mexico, with its stunningly beautiful coastline, it hosts dozens of large resorts, mostly four-star, from top American chains like Hilton, IHG Hotels, Marriott, and others. The city is a very popular vacation spot for Texans and a great place to stay for several nights, combining a vacation with a trip to Houston itself.

Accommodation in the center of Houston is divided between downtown, where there are large urban hotels, including luxury facilities from Marriott, Hyatt Regency, Hilton, and more, and large hotels scattered throughout the city, in clusters near highways, Hobby Airport, and other locations. These hotels are a mix of business hotels and motels and are generally of a high standard. There's also a significant concentration of good hotels in what's known as Houston's Uptown, along Highway 610.

Along the main roads of Houston, there are hundreds of motels, both toward the large George Bush Intercontinental Airport to the north and along highways 10, 45, and 69. Across the city, there are hundreds of motels and hotels that generally offer good quality, providing the overall American standard of clean and spacious rooms at a reasonable price.

Click here to check availability and prices at Houston hotels…

Map – Where to Stay in Houston and Galveston?

How to Plan a Travel Itinerary in Houston?

The travel itinerary in Houston and its metropolitan area is part of the urban tour of Texas. This tour focuses on the major cities of East Texas, the tri-city area – San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth, and if you wish, you can also stop in Austin, the capital. You can reach Houston for a vacation along the Galveston seawall as well.

Navigating a city tour is more complicated. Houston is a massive city sprawling over a vast area, and getting around can be pretty annoying (you definitely need Waze or some GPS). The city's attractions aren't focused on downtown but rather the Museum District, home to Hermann Park and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Not far from there is the lively Montrose District, where you'll find the Menil Collection and nearby the intriguing Rothko Chapel. Heading north takes you to Bayou Bend, gardens that are part of the city's art museum, but you'll have to drive there separately.

On the way to Galveston, stop at the city’s number one attraction – the Space Center. NASA’s official visitor center is a must-see and can be added to your trip to beautiful Galveston. In Galveston, it’s worth driving through the streets to admire the historic mansion houses (restored after the 1900 hurricane) and head to the Seawall, Texas' main recreational hub. In the center of the city on Seawall Boulevard, you’ll find the city pier, with restaurants, an amusement park, and entertainment spots. During your city tour, you should also visit Moody Gardens, enter the tropical garden pyramids, and the aquarium.

Click here to plan your trip to Houston and Southeast Texas with professional advice…

Everything to See and Do in Houston

Montrose District

The Montrose district is quite a rare gem in Texas, being a vibrant and trendy inner-city area filled with restaurants, vintage shops, nightclubs, cafes, and more. The main street of the district is Westheimer Road, where all the fun is at. The district is bustling both on weekends and late at night. The street itself is relatively safe and enjoyable at all hours of the day. Since the downtown area of the city is quite uninteresting, Westheimer serves as a sort of long city center loved by tourists and locals alike.

The Menil Collection

The Menil Collection Museum is located in the southern part of the Montrose district, serving as a cornerstone that makes it the epicenter of Houston's happenings. It's a fantastic modern museum showcasing an impressive collection from the best artists of the early and mid-20th century. The collection features leading European artists like Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, Henri Matisse, Marcel Duchamp, and more. The museum is designed around modern art movements and after highlighting the Europeans, showcases great American artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, and others.

The museum collection is based on the estate of John and Dominique de Menil, who, in addition to acquiring modern works, were very interested in antiquities with an emphasis on Byzantine arts. Adjacent to the museum and an important part of it is the modern Rothko Chapel, which elegantly mimics the European chapels of the Renaissance. The entire chapel is surrounded by large paintings by Mark Rothko and is considered the main attraction of the museum.

Address: 1533 Sul Ross St., Houston

Click here to obtain a free admission pass to the Menil Collection Museum…

Click here for the museum's current opening hours…

Hermann Park

Houston's city park is located in the southern part of the Museum District and is an integral part of it. It's a fun getaway for family outings and a favorite spot for city residents. The park was designed and planted in 1914 alongside Houston's Main Street that runs south from downtown. At its northern entrance, you'll find the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, along with the Children’s Museum of Houston, the Holocaust Museum, and the Health Museum. Within the park itself lies the major institution of the Houston Museum of Natural Science. The museum hosts an intriguing collection of fossils and full-scale dinosaur reconstructions.

Facing the museum stands proudly the statue of Sam Houston riding a horse, perhaps the most famous monument in the city. Across from the statue is the reflection pool of the massive Pioneer Memorial Obelisk located at the pool's southern part. Near the obelisk is the charming McGovern Lake, beyond which lies the city's large zoo.

Click here to purchase online tickets for the Houston Museum of Natural Science…

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Museum of Fine Arts is the main competitor of the Dallas Museum of Art for the title of the best museum in the central USA. It's a large and magnificent museum founded in 1900 and has managed to collect over 70,000 exhibits, including some particularly famous and high-quality masterpieces.

The collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston includes significant European works from the Renaissance, Baroque, and modern periods. It also features unique antiques from Mediterranean cultures, postmodern works, and more. The notable pieces in the museum's collection are:

• The famous painting by Hans Memling “Portrait of an Old Woman”
• “Saint Anthony and the Gold” by the great early Italian Renaissance artist Fra Angelico (the Angelic Brother)
• “The Virgin and Child” by Flemish Renaissance giant Rogier van der Weyden
• “The Adoration of the Child”, the famous mandala painting by Sandro Botticelli
• The gigantic painting “Juno and Luna” by Italian Baroque painter Gian Battista Tiepolo
• The famous painting by Amedeo Modigliani “Leopold Zborowski”
• The masterful “Madame Cézanne in Blue” by Paul Cézanne
• In a collection of rare paintings by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Camille Pissarro, Camille Corot, Claude Monet, and many more famous artists

Address: 1001 Bissonnet St., Houston

Click here for the museum's current opening hours…

Bayou Bend

The Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens are among Houston's most unique and beautiful destinations. The gardens are a sculpture garden and a wing of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, located in the west of the city near the banks of the Buffalo Bayou River. Bayou Bend serves as the arts wing of the museum, housing the decorative arts collection, industrial design, and additional displays of modern paintings. The wing is situated in the massive estate of the local philanthropist Ima Hogg and also showcases her rare private collection, which includes modern European artists such as Henri Matisse, Picasso, and others.

The most special part of the estate is, of course, the spectacular gardens. The gardens are designed in eight sections along the riverbank that flows beside them. The three gardens named after the mythological figures Diana, Euterpe, and Clio are considered the most beautiful, featuring a stunning blend of classical sculpture with refined and charming landscape design.

Address: Memorial Dr. 6003, Houston

Click here for the garden's latest operating hours…

Downtown Houston

Houston is a massive city that grew without restraint, known in urban studies as a sprawl city, a vast place without a central plan. Most parts of the fourth largest city in the US aren't particularly interesting for tourists, with the main attractions centered in the small downtown, a few excellent museums, the Montrose district, and of course, the Space Center and beyond to Galveston. Downtown Houston is a typical American downtown with some tall office buildings and main streets. The city's central street is Main Street, intersected by several streets with restaurants and shops.

Space Center Houston

The Houston Space Center is the city's top attraction and one of the most fascinating places in the entire United States. The center functions as a sort of science museum offering the hottest information about space, based on those who deal daily with the vastness beyond the atmosphere and are responsible for the spacecraft. The center is NASA's official visitor center, the American space agency, and the theme of dozens of American blockbusters. It opened in 1992 and showcases all the grandeur and technology of the American space program.

At the center, you can see spaceships, rockets, shuttles, and equipment that astronauts used for training or accompanied them to space. On display is the Apollo 17 capsule that was on the moon. It's an awesome place to visit with kids, especially those interested in space. Not far from there is NASA’s main control room, the famous ‘Houston, we have a problem,' which made the city an icon. The updated control room has moved to another location within the Johnson Space Center, but you can visit the original control room.

Address: E NASA Pkwy. 1601, Houston

Click here to buy tickets online + guided tour of the Space Center…

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Galveston

While Houston is a modern city sprawling over a vast area, Galveston, though a separate city, somewhat functions as the historic center of Houston itself. Galveston is located in the southeastern part of the Houston metropolitan area, approximately a fifty-minute drive from downtown. Between the two cities lies a continuum of suburbs and towns, all swallowed up by the metropolis. At the end of the 19th century, Galveston was the main and most important city in all of Texas, even before Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas developed.

The city was brought to a standstill by the hurricane on September 8, 1900, known as the Hurricane of 1900, considered the deadliest to hit the United States ever. It killed about ten thousand people, most of them when it made landfall in Galveston. The hurricane devastated the city, which was then the Texas industrial center. Since then, the city has not recovered, and today it's a popular resort city with about fifty thousand residents, not much more than lived there in 1900. The city has undergone significant restoration, with many of the Victorian mansions precisely restored, and it's now pure joy to cruise the beautiful streets of the city.

Along the waterfront, what's called the Seawall, a line of big resort hotels and resorts from the best of America's major chains awaits. The city is a very popular vacation spot for Texans themselves for domestic tourism and is generally considered one of the top vacation destinations of all the southern states.

Click here for the Dolphin Watch Tour, a cruise following dolphins in Galveston Bay…

Seawall Boulevard and Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier

Seawall Boulevard marks the coastline of Galveston leading to the Gulf of Mexico and is one of America's favorite relaxation spots. The island's protective wall suffered the most damage when the 1900 hurricane hit the coast. Luxurious resorts like Marriott, Holiday Inn, and Hilton have replaced the destroyed mansions along the boulevard, offering an exceptional beach experience. The concrete boulevard separates the line of hotels from the beach, serving not only as a roadway but also protecting against sea erosion during storms.

The line of hotels stretches south of what is considered the city's historic center. Along the shoreline in the historic center is the Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier, which somewhat resembles the pier at Santa Monica and the piers in Atlantic City. On the pier, there's an amusement park that is a very popular spot. In this part of the city, along the seawall, there’s a strip of excellent Texan grill restaurants, seafood, and fish eateries, bars, and entertainment venues.

Moody Gardens

Moody Gardens is a popular resort with many attractions, located in the eastern part of Galveston city, where the city's giant port once stood (mostly destroyed by the hurricane of 1900). The gardens include attractions such as the Rainforest Pyramid, a conservation structure in the shape of a pyramid, housing tropical plants and animals, resembling botanical gardens and a zoo within a greenhouse. Next to the pyramid is another pyramid housing the Aquarium At Moody Gardens, featuring a variety of colorful tropical fish and larger sea creatures.

The gardens also offer tourist attractions for vacationers like a large resort hotel, an extensive outdoor water park Palm Beach At Moody Gardens, an indoor water park Schlitterbahn Waterpark Galveston, a convention hall, advanced cinema halls, and more.

Events and Sports Teams in Houston

Basketball in Houston

Houston Rockets

The Rockets are Houston's prestigious basketball team and one of Texas' three phenomenal gems, alongside the Dallas Mavericks and the San Antonio Spurs. The Rockets also have a very illustrious tradition of victories and legendary playoff games, but the last championship they won was in 1995, under the leadership of Hakeem Olajuwon, who led the team to two consecutive championships in the two years Michael Jordan retired from basketball to play baseball. The team was established in 1967 in San Diego and moved to Houston about four years later. They play at the Toyota Center stadium in downtown, which holds 18,000 spectators.

Home Stadium Address: Polk St. 1510, Houston

Click here to purchase tickets for Rockets games on the NBA site…

Baseball in Houston

Houston Astros

While the Rockets are considered Houston's flagship team, it's the Astros who have thrived in recent years and are seen as one of the top teams in Major League Baseball (MLB). The team was founded in the city in 1960 under the name Houston Colts, named after the revolver, but after three years they changed their name to the Astros after NASA's Space Center, which is based in the city. The Astros were always considered a weak team, but in the last ten years, they've surprised everyone by shining and even clinched two World Series titles in 2017 and 2022.

Today, the team is considered very strong in the baseball league and their games are always packed with fans. The Astros play at Minute Maid Park (yes… Tropicana's less fresh competitors), located in downtown Houston near the Toyota Center. The stadium can accommodate 40,000 spectators and is one of the few in the league with a roof that can close in case of (quite common) rain in the city (baseball isn't played in the rain, if it rains the game is postponed).

Home Stadium Address: Crawford St. 501, Houston

Click here to purchase tickets for Astros games at Minute Maid Park…

Football in Houston

Houston Texans

The Texans are the representatives of the city of Houston in the professional NFL. They are the newest team in the league, founded in 2002 after the local empire – the Oilers left the city for Nashville, where they became the Titans. The team hasn't achieved extraordinary results yet, but they generally aren't bad at all and deliver great games (if you manage to get tickets). The Texans play at the large NRG Stadium in the southern part of the city, which holds 72,000 spectators.

Home Stadium Address: NRG Pkwy, Houston

Click here to purchase tickets for the Texans games on the team's official website…