Beaches, historic buildings and New Orleans flair: Galveston

Below just a few impressions of Galveston, a harbor town at the Gulf of Mexico, completely different from the other towns we have visited in the Bay Area.


Since the 18th century - under Spanish government - Galveston was an important port and trading hub. In 1900, as well as in 2008, the city was badly hurt by hurricanes, but always rebuilt. Today it's a favorite spring break destination with long beaches, (souvenir) shops and restaurants along "The Strand" (the main street with its historic buildings, pic above), the Seawall Boulevard (along the oceanfront) with shrimpers rowed up and a huge cruiseship harbor on one end. It sure has some sort of "New Orleans flair" and, also, Galveston's Mardi Gras Parade is famous.


Besides historic home like the Moody Mansion (pic above) and the great Western Art Bryan Museum (above), the Moody Gardens - consisting of three pyramids containing a rainforest, an aquarium and special exhibitions - is the city's main attraction.



And, tomorrow, Rodeo time will start,,,

Houston's Bay Area

On Sunday - after having picked up our rental car at AVIS Downtown, a Nissan Altima - we left Houston, unfortunately in the rain, towards the Houston Bay Area, which is situated half way from Houston to Galveston, at the Galveston Bay.It only took us about an hour to get to Kemah, where we were hosted for two nights in the beautiful Kemah Boardwalk Inn (pics below). We had a balcony at our suite and a great view toward the bay and the entertainment park with rides, ferris wheel and aquarium.

In the afternoon we explored the Houston Bay with Shawna, an excellent tourism ambassador, and got to know all about Kemah, League City, Nassau Bay and Seabrook, the main towns around the bay. Though, oil refineries and the Port of Houston are dominant, there is a lot to see, much more than expected. The above mentioned cities are almost grown together, but there is lots of marshlands, especially around Clear Lake, parks, trails, nature preserves and fancy homes along the waterfront. Also, there are a couple of really good craft breweries, which we got a chance to experience, too, e.g. Texas Beer Refinery (pic) and Galveston Bay Brewing Company. Also, there is excellent seafood in abundance and seafood markets with shrimps and catfish like shown on pics let your mouth water!

League City is the oldest settlement thanks to ranching and Texas Longhorns, and it was the starting point of many cattle drives. It is famous for its old live oaks, reminding of plantations in Louisiana. Seabrook is famous for its pelican art project (pic) called "Pelican Love", and, in Nassau Bay the main attraction is NASA Space Center (which we skipped, because we have visited it a couple of years ago). Kemah Boardwalk can be considered the "Coney Island" of Houston and is mostly about entertainment, dining, little shops and bars.

The Lone Star Flight Museum at Ellington Airport (pics below) was formerly in Galveston and re-opened newly recently, much more attractive now. It primarily shows a gigantic collection of historic military planes in a huge building. There are some civilian planes, too, as the revolutionary DC 3, one of the first passenger planes.

More coming up on Galveston, stay tuned, right now long days at the Houston Rodeo ,,,

Colorful parade, delicious food and great music

Houston Rodeo only starts on Tuesday, but the parade takes place on the Saturday before. So we headed out early Saturday morning to find a space to sit/stand along the route through Houston Downtown, in walking distance from our hotel. Breakfast consisted of tamales from a street vendor. It's also a tradition that before the parade the Rodeo Race starts: a 10K race, a 5K fun run/walk (for everybody) with over 9,000 participants!

Every February since 1938 Houston is celebrating the Western heritage with a 20 day long rodeo and a 2-hour parade. Besides decorative, colorful floats (especially of organisations and supermarkets) there are high schoon and university marching bands, dance groups, drill teams, official mounted groups like police or military units. The main and most unique participants are thousands of men and women on horseback and in carriages. The floats as well as the trail rides are judged and win awards.

The Trail Ride tradition started in 1952, when four men traveled on horseback from Brenham, Texas, to raise awareness of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. More than 3,000 trail riders, in 11 groups, led by a Trail Boss, take part today and they come from all over Texas. The longest one comes from San Antonio/TX, which is about 240 miles. There are century old wagons drawn by mules, and family members and generations of all ages take part.

The mayor (pic) and many high politicians, committee members and celebrities were on the parade and it was fun to watch. It was mostly the Mexican groups setting up a big show with their "dancing horses", for the rest it was mainly your standard working horses - no glimmer, no glitter - just as it should be for a REAL cowboy/girl.

After the parade we headed out to the fairgrounds, where the BBQ Cookoff took place from Thursday to Saturday. That was completely different from what we had expected: Huge! Like 10 times the Oktoberfest, with large decorated tents set up and operated by companies and organisations, mostly only accessible by invitation. We were so fortunate as to get into the Visit Houston tent and had a wonderful BBQ & seafood lunch there. The BBQ event is a competition at the same time and in the "Judge's Tent" the different BBQ teams (which were selected and had to win several other smaller competitions before) bring in their dishes and get judged.




Adjacent to the tent village (on the rodeo grounds parking lot) is a Carnival (pics above) with rides and entertainment of all kinds, popular with families. It'll be active during the rodeo. We took the streetcar back to our downtown hotel and dressed up to attend the Houston Symphony for a classical concert. The orchestra and their famous young conductor Andres Orozco Estrada (pic) will go on a tour through Europe next week including a couple of concerts in Germany. Famous violinist Hilary Hahn (pic) was joining them and it was a great experience.
Long day packed with a broad variety of different things ,,, love it!