Our tour of ballparks continues as we headed down I-45 South to Houston, home of Minute Maid Park and the dreaded Houston Astros.
Minute Maid Park aka "The Juice Box".
Our Texas Rangers were playing the Houston Astros.
We were in enemy territory...until they announced that Angel Hernandez was behind home plate calling balls and strikes as he imagines them to be (vs. actual balls and strikes), then we were all on the same team. He got more boos than Adolis Garcia. If you check out his accuracy of that game, you'll understand why!
We were celebrating the most hated player on the Rangers team! He actually got booed!
Minute Maid Park is actually pretty cool. It's right on the edge of downtown Houston. They have a retractable roof but it's full of windows so you can see all the buildings. The park is built on what used to be Union Station and the train is in homage to the site's history. As a lover of history, I like it!
This would be Bobby Dynamite. He's the "engineer" and he wears Astros overalls. Some guy behind us was wearing that same outfit. It looked way better on him than on Bobby. When the Astros take the field in the first inning, score a run or hit a homer, Bobby moves the train forward 800 feet, rings the bell and toots the horn (according to the web). He also gets the fans fired up.
It was a great game. The fans gave us some grief but it was all good natured, especially considering they lost 12- 8. The guy we were sitting next to asked if we were staying for the fireworks. Why not? They opened the roof, which was cool to watch and then for the next 30 minutes, we had another great show. They do this for every Friday night home game.
But wait! There's more! We went down on Tuesday and the game wasn't until Friday so we had some time to knock around Houston. I have to admit, it's not my favorite city. I've been there for work several times and I always got lost. Thank God for the map on the phone. We stayed at the Hampton Inn downtown about a block from the ballpark. It was a great location.
When you think of Houston, you don't think of outdoor things because it's usually very muggy. We picked a perfect week to be there. The weather was fantastic. We went to the Houston Botanical Gardens. It wasn't what I expected but I saw some cool things like this worm chowing down on this apple. These fuzzy worms were all over the place!
We also saw this Great White Egret. It scared the crap out of me because I thought it was a statue. It moves...fast.
We had the whole place to ourselves!
The Menil Collection is a FREE museum that is on the University of St. Thomas campus. It's a cool collection of sculptures, paintings and African art. No photos inside.
Houston is the county seat of Harris County. This is the 1910 Harris County Courthouse. The original courthouse on this site was erected in 1838. Subsequent courthouses also on this site were in 1851, 1860 and 1884. The first courthouse was a log structure that was eventually enlarged and then sold. The 1851 courthouse was erected in it's place but after nine years of service, the walls began to crack so it was demolished. The 1860 courthouse was started but construction was interrupted by the Civil War. It was never finished and the square was used as a municipal park. Then in 1884, a fourth courthouse was built. However, after twenty-five years of use, it too was deemed a fire hazard and demolished.
One thing I really liked about downtown was all the murals. I really liked this one.
This one was good too. It was at the back of our hotel in a parking lot.
We also visited the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center, also not what I expected. There is lots of nature.
I thought it would be more like our Arboretum with tons of flowers, etc. but it was mostly walking trails. That was alright too. We did the outer loop. Since it was Thursday, parking was free. Entrance to the Arboretum is always free.
Then we went the Houston Fine Arts Museum. Surprise! It's FREE on Thursdays! What a nice surprise. Especially because we went after lunch not realizing how huge it was...three buildings! If we paid the entrance fee, I'd have felt the need to power through all three buildings. Instead we got to leisurely enjoy the first building. This was one of my favorite paintings. It's called "By The River" by John Singer Sargent.
Another favorite: "Saint Mary Magdalene" by Michele Tosini. We have already decided that we need to come back and enjoy the remaining buildings.
One of the many historic buildings in downtown, this is the United States Custom House built in 1907. It housed a post office, federal courts and the customs offices but now houses federal offices.
The Annunciation Church, also in downtown Houston across the street from our hotel. It's a beautiful church and you can see the steeple from several places downtown. It's the second Catholic Church in Houston. It was built in 1869 with the intention of it becoming a Cathedral but never reached that status.
On our last afternoon, we tried to go to Herman Park. It was a Friday with amazingly beautiful weather so that wasn't an original idea. It was a mob scene! We circled the parking lot with about 20 other cars so we gave up and went to Buffalo Bayou Park. This place was cool. Tons of trails, some only for walkers (vs. bikers). We picked a trail and followed it for a while.
Then we found this fantastic view of the Houston skyline. It wasn't packed but there were others there (they probably couldn't find a place to park at Herman Park either!).
After our day of walking around, we hung out at the rooftop pool to read and relax before we headed to the game.
What a fun time we had! It helped that the Rangers won on Friday. Luckily we didn't stay for the other two games. We will definitely do this again!
