Exploring in Houston
Published Saturday November 15th, 2008
Space Center, museums, warm climate make Houston a draw for tourists
HOUSTON - It's hard to believe just a few weeks ago Houston was a hurricane-whipped mess.
But, taking the state's "Don't mess with Texas" catch line to heart, Houston cleaned up fast and is already welcoming back tourists, conventioneers and business travellers.
"Hurricane Ike (which pummelled Houston with 130-kilometre-an-hour winds on Sept. 13) was scary," admits Jorge Franz, vice-president of tourism for the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau.
"There was so much debris with fallen trees, flooding and broken windows in skyscrapers all over downtown. The biggest problem was that many areas were without electricity for up to three weeks. But the city has now completely recovered."
It's Franz's job to let the world know that Houston is back in business after Ike. And the agency's publicity machine is in full force.
Houston is 70 kilometres from the Gulf of Mexico where Ike most heavily hit the beach resort of Galveston.
Galveston is doing an admirable job of cleaning up and rebuilding but likely won't be fully ready to welcome tourists until its Mardi Gras in February.
I've always wanted to visit Texas.
After all, it's done such a great job branding itself as the Lone Star State full of southern drawls, swaggering cowboys and oil entrepreneurship.
So I made my way there in mid-October to see that. Besides the odd roughed-up roof and in-the-works landscaping there's little evidence Ike put Houston through a crisis.
With my quick visual inspection over, it was time to be a tourist.
The city's biggest attraction is Space Center Houston, the official site of the NASA Johnson Space Center where astronauts are trained and Mission Control is located.
But there's also Downtown Aquarium, Houston Zoo, a dozen museums and world-class convention centre, dining, theatre and shopping.
Houston loves Canadians.
Being the headquarters for numerous oil and gas companies, Houston has a lot to do with Canada's oil and gas capital, Calgary, and our commerce capital, Toronto.
As a result most of Air Canada's three-times-a-day flights from each Calgary and Toronto are full of mostly corporate travellers.
"We want to become a leisure destination for Canadians too," says Franz. "We have a year-round warm climate, so it will probably start with business travellers staying for an extra day and golfing or deciding to bring their family with them."
Roxanne Butler, the director of communications with the Houston Airport System, concurs.
"This city has its own big personality," she says. "It's not just cowboys and oil, but museums and theatre and kid-friendly."
It's surprising to most that Houston is Texas's biggest metropolis. The 1980s hit TV show "Dallas" still gives that city top-of-mind awareness and the impression it's the state's biggest.
In fact, with a population of 5.6 million, Houston is the fourth-largest city in the United States behind New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.
Houston delivers on the "Everything's bigger in Texas" reputation.
Downtown is full of shiny new skyscrapers built with oil and bank wealth.
To keep it livable, condominium towers are going up at a rapid pace.
The 400,000-square-metre George R. Brown Convention Center attracts 1.8 million conventioneers a year, including the 100,000 that showed up to its National Football League Experience in 2004 when Houston hosted the Super Bowl.
Speaking of sports, Toyota Center is home to the National Basketball Association's Houston Rockets and Minute Maid Park is where the Major League Baseball Houston Astros play.
Reliant Stadium for the NFL's Houston Texans is located a little farther out of downtown.
More than one million visitors a year go to Space Center Houston to take in everything to do with the U.S. space program. The centre likes to boast that "It's not a theme park, but the real thing."
The 90-minute tram tour takes you to Mission Control where Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous phrase, "Houston, the Eagle has landed," was heard in July 1969 right before he was the first man to step on the moon.
It's also where Jim Lovell's words, "Houston, we have a problem," were heard in 1970 when an oxygen tank exploded and the Apollo 13 mission had to be aborted. The tense tale of how the astronauts barely made it back to Earth alive is chronicled in the "Apollo 13" movie starring Tom Hanks.
The place is full of exhibits ranging from rockets that have been in space to kid-friendly interactive displays. You can even touch a rock from the moon.
Downtown Aquarium features two million litres of exotic fish displays, a shark tunnel you take an open-top train through, a grotto with four white tigers, amusement park and restaurant bisected by a massive fish tank.
Houston Zoo is where I patted baby elephant Tucker under the watchful eye of his mom Tess. The 20-hectare property houses 800 species, including what media relations officer Brian Hill calls the "big five" -- elephants, lions, tigers, giraffes and bears.
The Houston Museum of Natural Science is a cluster of museums around Hermann Park.
The expected dinosaur skeletons dominate the central exhibit hall, but there's also a priceless gems vault, IMAX theatre, planetarium and live butterfly atrium.
Until February the museum has the famous Dr. Gunther von Hagen's "Body Worlds" exhibition of real human bodies and parts preserved with his "Plastination" process.
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If You Go ...
-- Air Canada flies non-stop to Houston from Calgary and Toronto. www.aircanada.com.
-- The US$34 Houston CityPass allows admission to the city's six biggest attractions -- Space Centre Houston, George Ranch Historical Park, Houston Zoo, Downtown Aquarium, Houston Museum of Natural Science and Museum of Fine Arts. www.citypass.com.
-- Boutique hotel Indigo is located uptown adjacent to the giant Galleria shopping mall. Overnight rates start US$152. www.hotelindigo.com.
-- If you prefer to stay downtown, the themed Inn at the Ballpark is located beside Minute Maid Park. Overnight rates start at US$199. www.innattheballpark.com.
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