Houston-Round 2

Hey y'all! Welcome back to yet another trip with Tori. We're headed back to Houston, this time with my kids! My kids are older so traveling with them is so refreshing and such a breeze. I have friends that have younger kids and it just looks like a nightmare lol. Anyway, I love traveling with my broke besties. So like I said in the previous blog, my soul has been being pulled towards Texas. With that being said, I need to get the stamp of approval to the MOST important people in my life, my kids. They're literally my everything, so their opinion matters. Okay back to the subject at hand, Houston Texas. This time I rented a vehicle to be able to travel more freely, I like to just drive and explore places. We rented a cute little apartment that was centrally located and easy to get any and everywhere. We were probably 10mins away from Graffiti park, which my kids loved. They art junkies like me though ;). So we got there and pretty much just hung out at the house for the first night, got some food and just relaxed. Before we got there I ordered City Passes (link under travel and excursions) and let me tell you!! Those things are amazing, you get to explore a lot of different places that are popular around different cities. We started with the Johnson Space Center (NASA), there were all the different astronaut suits, different explorations they went on, even some of the rockets that they went up in. It was very informative and a really cool experience. I, myself, is a space junky as well as art, I could get lost in the stars at night. So to see the setup of the different atmospheres from space was amazing. We ate at this spanish restaurant named El Tiempo Cantina, the food was SO good, the margarita's were good and if you want a to-go margarita they put it in this cute little mini milk jug. Customer service was amazing as well, literally little wait time and very on point with service. After we left there we decided to drive around the area, check out the art on the different buildings and just see how the area was in general. Like I said, this is a place I'm considering moving so I need to check out all aspects. Next day we decided to really get out and explore. We headed straight for The Houston Museum of Natural Science, we added on the King Tut exhibit where we could travel through a replica of his tomb. It had all the items that are displayed in his tomb throughout the exhibit, different informative programs running to tell you about that era of time. Now with this museum it is 3 stories, maybe 4 (can't quiet remember) the King Tut is on the highest level then you travel down from there. This place was amazing! Different animals displayed, different time periods showing the animals in their habitats. We thoroughly enjoyed this experience. Leaving from there, the Houston Zoo is like a 3 minute drive down the street. Remember I told you we did the City Pass (HIGHLY recommend) all of these things we're doing are included in that pass. Okay on to the zoo, now we are from Florida so we are use to a wet sticky hot. Texas is hot but not like Florida hot. So we weren't that bad walking around the zoo looking at the different animals. The first thing I noticed walking in was the landscaping, it looks amazing. Plenty of trees for shade and just an all around great look. They have different animals than what we're use to, which was so cool for us to see up close and personal and learn about. We were a little tired from all the moving around so we went to relax a little and then headed back out later that evening to a hands on museum called Seismique. Now like my previous blog where my friend and I went to Color Factory, this place has some AMAZING photo ops. They don't take the photos for you though like Color Factory does but it is set up with different rooms and experiences. Out of this world type of things, you have to go over to the gallery to check out the pictures. Its really unexplainable but amazing and will definitely be going back. Next day we woke up and wanted to see what their beach was about.... like I mentioned.. we're from Florida and are water fanatics. Lets just say we were not impressed with Galveston beach. Had some fun little areas but the actual beach, no thanks :(. Just looked dirty to us.. It's something we would have to get use to if we moved there. We left from there and traveled over to the Kemah Boardwalk. This place was cool, right on the water (looked much better than the beach water) and has different rides and activities to do plus plenty of restaurants. All in all our trip was great, it gave us an opportunity to explore and get a feel for Houston and right outside of Houston. I told the kids we wouldn't be moving directly into Houston anyway but on the outskirts somewhere. I don't want to go from a big city to a big city, I'd like to move somewhere I don't have neighbors on top of me or cars everywhere. Thanks for reading! Looking forward to your return for my next entry!

-Vic