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 ,,,