Houston: culturally diverse and vast in area, America's fourth largest city abounds with attractions, from outstanding museums to a sparkling new baseball park - City of the Month

Travel America, March-April, 2002 by Mike Michaelson

Houston is as Texan as a longhorn steer. It's big and sprawling, covering 617 square miles--more than half the size of the state of Rhode Island. Named after a local hero, General Sam Houston, who defeated General Santa Anna's Mexican army in 1836 in a battle at nearby San Jacinto, the city has blossomed into a major modern metropolis.

Houston is an international center of business and finance, with world-class visual and performing arts, museums, and stylish restaurants--many as good as you'll find back east, but minus the sticker shock. It has a thriving theater district and, with 10,000 theater seats, ranks second only to New York. Aficionados of sun and surf head for the beaches and boardwalks of the Texas Gulf Coast, less than an hour's drive from downtown.

Yet Houston also is ethnically diverse, with newly arrived immigrants--"New Texans"--proud to be part of the historic state while also preserving their cultural identity. You'll find street signs in Vietnamese, Chinese, and Portuguese, while Middle Eastern grocery stores and Indian sari shops coexist with Buddhist temples and restored African-American row-houses (now housing galleries with folk art).

So diverse is this city of 1.9 million that more than 90 languages are spoken. Houston also is a friendly, welcoming city, where people who pass you in the street are ready to say "hi."

Despite its urban sprawl, Houston is a manageable tourist destination. Its downtown core is served by a trolley system that covers five routes and is ideal for visiting the attraction-packed Museum District and other downtown areas. For visits to outlying attractions such as Space Center Houston, Six Flags Astroworld (now with 11 roller coasters and a water park), the San Jacinto Monument, and Gulf beaches, you'll want to consider a rental car.

Start your tour of Houston's vibrant, revitalized downtown at the Houston Visitors Center. Located in historic City Hall, it offers a 10-minute film and user-friendly interactive kiosks.

Bold new attractions include Enron Field, the new major league ballpark that hosted some of last season's baseball playoff action. Home of the Astros, it has a retractable roof and incorporates as its entrance Union Station, built in 1911. This 42,000-seat stadium includes a locomotive that blows its stack each time the home team scores.

Also downtown are many of Houston's more than 30 museums. These include the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, with a stellar collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art as well as important Renaissance and 18th century paintings. This is America's sixth largest art museum, notable for work by such master artists as Van Gogh, Monet, Matisse, and Gaugin.

A smaller art museum, the Menil Collection, is a true hidden gem. Its 15,000-piece collection ranges from Byzantine and tribal art to the 20th century schools of Cubism, Minimalism, and Pop. It includes exceptional Surrealist works by Ernst and Magritte.

If you're interested in dinosaurs or space travel, you'll want to view the eclectic collections of the Houston Museum of Natural Science. There, you can visit a rainforest with a waterfall, tropical vegetation, iguanas, and 2,000 free-flying butterflies, see planetarium shows, and take in an IMAX movie on a screen six stories high. Rockhounds delight in a world-class display of more than 600 gems and minerals.

A sobering visit to the Holocaust Museum Houston recalls the millions who perished in the death-camp ovens of the Nazi regime during World War II. On film are chilling first-hand accounts of local survivors and liberators.

Old favorites, such as the Astrodome, the world's first domed stadium (which hosts the world's largest rodeo) continue to draw visitors. So does Space Center Houston, where you can try your piloting skills with a computer-simulated landing of a space shuttle. There are displays of spacecraft and space suits and guided tours of astronaut training facilities. You can view an IMAX film and touch a moon rock.

Another perennially popular outlying attraction is 570-foot-tall San Jacinto Monument, commemorating the battlefield where Texas won its independence from Mexico. Charlton Heston narrates a multi-image presentation. Berthed nearby is the battleship Texas that saw action at Normandy and Iwo Jima.

Naturally, you'll find plenty of Tex-Mex cafes and barbecue joints among Houston's 8,000 eateries. But along with beef and burritos is a range of restaurants as varied as Spanish tapas bars, South American churrascaria, Italian trattoria, and French bistros. Nonetheless, you won't want to miss such dining icons as Goode Co. Barbecue, famed for its brisket and links, and Berryhill Hot Tamales and Tacos (where gazpacho is made fresh daily and margaritas are fashioned with flesh-squeezed lime juice). An offbeat place to eat (and a family favorite) is Ruggles at Enron Field. While tables on game day may be tougher to come by than a no-hitter, it's a fun spot even when the Astros aren't taking the field.