A few weeks back, the hubby and I decided it was time to go check in on our condo in Houston, and that gave us the perfect opportunity to take a little weekend getaway and explore Houston in the process.
Despite owning property in Houston, and having relatives who’ve lived in or near Houston nearly my whole life, I’d never really taken the time to explore the city like a visitor. It was almost like it was TOO big, TOO sprawling, and TOO intimidating to know where to start. But with our major vacations not happening until slightly later in the year, the hubby and I needed a break, and Houston was the perfect locale.
We managed to snag a super cheap hotel room in the Galleria area of town at the Royal Sonesta Houston during a particularly epic Black Friday sale on Hotels.com. Through the deal, we got a room priced at $85 a night — a steal considering that rooms at this property often run for $300 or more per night, and we happened to book during the final weekend of Rodeo Houston, which is a big tourist weekend for the city.
However, we were not there for the rodeo — in fact, our first attraction was a decidedly more erudite affair, as we visited the impressive new Van Gogh exhibit at the Houston Museum of Fine Art. While the exhibit didn’t feature many of Van Gogh’s more notable works, I really enjoyed the “experiential” section called “Van Gogh for Everyone” which let you feel like you were in one of his paintings:
After working through all that artwork, though, we’d built up quite an appetite and headed over to the nearby Lucille’s for a tasty Saturday brunch, which ended up being our favorite meal of the trip. We started with fried green tomatoes topped with goat cheese, before sharing a main course of crab cakes benedict. Delicious!
Later on, we continued our exploration of the Downtown area over at Discovery Green, an outdoor park/performance/art space in Houston right next to the Convention Center.
At Discovery Green, we checked out the current installment “Gust” which featured hundreds of multicolored pinwheels, and witnessed a modern dance performance troupe as well.
On the other side of the Convention Center, we moved away from art into another favorite pastime of ours: beer. We attempted to visit the 8th Wonder Brewing Company, but alas, they were closed for a private event. So we settled on a visit to Truck Yard instead, the only bar I’ve ever seen which has a fully contained ferris wheel.
The rest of our weekend was fairly low key, with stops at Tongue-Cut Sparrow for cocktails (awesome, make a reservation), dinner at Peli Peli (meh), and Sunday brunch at Hugo’s (also good, again make a reservation). But on our home, we couldn’t help but indulging in one more of our favorite things: ice cream!
It just so happens that halfway between Austin and Houston lies the sleepy little city of Brenham, Texas, who is famously the home of Blue Bell Ice Cream. Despite busy spring break crowds, we had to stop in for a scoop.
And that’s a wrap for Houston! Stay tuned for some big news about the blog soon, and some exciting new travel in our future!
