DOWNTOWN HOUSTON

Thursday, December 6 –  We walked around downtown Houston Tuesday. We began at City Hall where we picked-up a tourist map and some suggestions at the Visitor's Center. This is a very nice visitor's center in the heart of downtown. The ladies working there are extremely friendly and helpful.

Sam Houston overseeing the running of the Visitor's Center.

They have just about anything you will find in Houston.

From there we headed to the Underground. A mere 20-feet below downtown Houston is a maze 7.5-mile-long tunnel system for 150,000-employee workforce. There are doctors' offices, banking, shopping, post office, salons, tons of eating establishments, etc. Anyone can access the network via street-level stairs, escalators, office-building elevators or head to Wells Fargo Plaza, which offers direct street-to-tunnel access. It is entirely air-conditioned which is pretty nice for a city that can see 100+ temperatures and high humidity.

It is so clean everywhere.

We then headed down Main Street to the Chase Tower.

Here you can take a free express elevator up to the 60^th floor observation deck. That elevator flew! We enjoyed a marvelous view of the city and the maze of the famous (or is that infamous) Houston highway system.

This view is only half of the freeway roads. This does not include I-45 and all its feeder roads.

We then walked to Discovery Green, home of many outdoor activities in Houston. It borders the Convention Center, The Toyota Center, home of the Houston Rockets NBA basketball team, and some exclusive downtown living centers like One Park Place where apartment style homes sell in the million dollar range.

There is a beautiful pond in the middle of the Green.

With temperatures in the high 70s and low 80s, this ice skating rink isn't getting much use…yet.

Can you guess which is One Park Place? Yep the tall one with the peaks. An amazing place.

From there we walked to the Houston Pavilion, one of the many, many nightlife sections of Houston.

The 24,886 sq. ft. Lucky Strike Lanes and Lounge, aka bowling alley, is one of a kind. Lucky Strike Lanes features 14 state-of-the-art lanes including a Luxe Premium Suite complete with four private lanes, a separate bar, and a 20′ x 12′ HD projection screen perfect for exclusive parties and events.You enjoy bowling from a living room style lounge area....no plastic chairs here!

Luxe Premium Suite

We then walked back toward our starting point.

Houston has a free bus service in the downtown area. The bus covers most of the downtown area. Since we wanted to see the city "up close and personal," we opted to walked the 100s of miles…just seemed like 100s. All kidding aside, Houston is a very easy, clean city to get in a nice walk.

 

We then scurried back to the truck managing to get out of town BEFORE the famous rush hour began....whew!

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see y'all back real soon. Have a great day!