Growing up in Katy, Texas, a suburb of Houston was definitely not the most thrilling experience of my life. Granted, I love my house and love where I live. Needless to say, it is B-O-R-I-N-G.
I guess because of that, I associate the whole city of Houston as being boring and therefore was appalled when I found an article by Nicole Frehsee from Budget Travel Magazine naming Houston as one of the Top Budget Travel Destinations for 2011.
How can it be?! I mean, my brother lives downtown and I know he enjoys the life there, but still, I have never considered Houston a tourist hot-spot.
Courtesy of Google Images.
Also on this list were some great places including Dublin, Ireland; Lisbon, Portugal; Tallinn, Estonia; Colombia; Shanghai, China; Sri Lanka; Jamaica; and Banff in Alberta, Canada. These all sound pretty amazing to me, so how did Houston manage to sneak on to the list?!
Well, according to Frehsee, Houston is a highly budget friendly city.
"Houston is home to Texas's biggest shopping mall at 2.2 million square feet; 56,000 acres of green space; and the third most Fortune 500 companies in the country, but when it comes to prices, the U.S.'s fourth-largest city is all about scaling down," she said.
According to a Hotwire.com report, hotel rates in Houston have dropped 5% since 2009 and it is possible to find a four-star hotel room for only $96 a night in the city. I guess that's pretty commendable. You go H-town!
The city also has over 8,000 restaurants in conjunction with an average meal price more than $2.50 lower than the national average. I guess that is why I am so well-fed at home! One of my personal favorites? Check out Catalan Food and Wine for some delicious and gourmet Spanish-inspired food. I went there in December for my mom's birthday, and it was one of the best meals I have ever had. I guess I am just proving to myself how awesome Houston actually is. Oh, and the best part of the meal? For my mom's birthday they brought out two giant martini glasses of COTTON CANDY!
Children's Museum of Houston. Photo Courtesy of Google Images.
CityPASS offers passes for a multitude of cities, and Houston's pass is by far the cheapest. Rock on Houston!
So bloggers,if you are going to come stop by the city that raised me, my best advice would be DO NOT GO IN THE SUMMER! It is hot and humid and gross. I would definitely suggest springtime, particularly March because you can get a true taste of Texas by going to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.
The best part about coming to Houston is that 33 cities in the United States have non-stop flight to Houston on Southwest. How cool is that?!
So I guess I stand corrected. Houston seems to me to be a great city to visit on a budget. Just make sure you don't go over your budget with all of that shopping around!
Hmmm...maybe my next staycation will be in Houston this summer. Do you have any plans of coming to Houston? I would love to play tour guide!
According to the illustrious and always "credible" Urban Dictionary, a staycation is "A vacation that is spent at one's home enjoying all that home and one's home environs have to offer." I thought I would take a little staycation within the next few weeks so I wanted to research some cool things to do in Austin.
This post is especially meant for all those students out there who have to live life on a rather tight budget. So, why bother traveling around the world and spending piles of money when most of us have not even explored our own hometown city? Since I live in Austin, I will center my staycation around Austin of course. But do some research of your own and figure out great things to do in your own city!
Let's think of the perfect weekend staycation in Austin...
Friday Night: Why not start the weekend off right? Grab some dinner and see a fun show! There are so many options for dinner downtown that my best recommendation would be to walk around and just see what looks good. However, for some guidance, I really enjoy Imperia or Moonshine. Imperia is a more upscale sushi restaurant while Moonshine offers an array of innovative down-home American cooking in a great environment. Whatever you choose, you are sure to have a great meal downtown.
Now, here's the scoop on my favorite entertainment spot: Esther's Follies has been around Austin since two of my best friend's parents went to school. Both sets of parents have memories of going on dates there, and it is still around today. Amazing!
I even took my mom there when she came to visit this year and it was absolutely hilarious. But don't just take my word. Watch this video and see for yourself:
So what did you think? The review website Yelp gives it four and a half stars which is almost near perfection. The reviews, like the one below, all rave about the show and how funny it is, and I agree.
"FUN! Something to do whether you're a Texan or out-of-state visitor. It's a combination of a musical, magic show, Saturday Night Live-like skits and variety stage show. Definitely recommend it if you're looking for something different to do while on 6th. Some skits are just so much funnier because of the window into the street. There's audience participation for those who like to play along or watch others suffer. Worth the cost of admission. There's also a bar for drinks and outside, near the entrance, there's a small food stand where they have great sweet potato fries."--Alex G.
Esther's Follies is also conveniently located downtown, so after the show you can go out and experience a true Austin hot-spot, 6th Street.
6th Street at Night. Courtesy of Google Images.
What a great and fun Friday night!
Saturday: My ideal staycation Saturday starts off with a nice walk around Zilker Park. If the mood strikes, you could see Town Lake or take a nice dip in natural, spring-fed Barton Creek Swimming Pool. Austin is a highly active city, and part of exploring Austin includes seeing all of its natural beauty.
After a morning like that, you will most definitely get hungry. Here is the tough part. There are literally so many incredibly great restaurants in Austin that I don't even know how to begin recommending them to you. But I will do my best, and if none of these appeal to you, have a quick jump over to my friend Rachel's blog to see her favorite spots of Austin.
Well, here it goes. Let's start with some simple suggestions.
My favorite, most laid-back, lunch spot is actually a grocery store! Can you believe it? I don't think you would be able to unless you have been to the Whole Foods headquarters in downtown Austin. There are 80,000 square feet of space in this one location! That is a lot of food! Basically you can pick anything you could ever think of in this store. There is a deli counter, a sushi bar, barbecue, a taqueria, and the list just keeps going. Even if this is not where you spend your lunch time, it should be a must-see on your things to do here. Most of my weekend, whether on a staycation or not, involve at least one trip to Whole Foods.
Whole Food Market on Lamar. Courtesy of www.wholefoods.com
Another great place I would go is Walton's Fancy and Staple on Sixth Street. Although I have never been there, I have heard from friends that it is a great option for sandwiches and salads. Oh, and have I mentioned that Sandra Bullock is the owner? How cool is that?!
Finish out your staycation day by hitting up the South Congress area. This is essentially Austin in a nut-shell. It is quirky, vibrant, and has so many creative stores that you could literally spend all day here. If you like vintage shopping, this is the place to go. Oh, an if those other two restaurants did not strike your fancy, have I mentioned that South Congress is home to many of the food trailers that make Austin famous?
Take a stop at Mighty Cone or any of the other food trailers along the street and you will not be disappointed. Is sitting down in a restaurant more your style? Ok, then head over to Home Slice for one of the best slice's of pizza you can find in Austin. All of these options sound mouth-wateringly delicious to me, but this is my staycation. You can tailor yours to go anywhere you want. That's the best part of a staycation!
So now your daytime activities are over and you are simply exhausted. Well, in my staycation dreams, I would go home to sleep and rest for the next day, but here is another relaxing option. Ever heard of Mozart's?
Mozart's is a cafe on Lake Austin with incredible views of the lake and great outdoor seating. Their coffees are strong and delicious and their pastries and cakes are decadent and rich. Sounds great, right?
It is. Even if you are full from all the food you enjoyed today, bring out a book or your Ipod or a friend to read, listen to music or have a long chat with while overlooking the lake. Or just listen to the live music that almost always happens at Mozart's at night. Nothing could be more serene.
Photo courtesy of www.mozartscoffee.com
Saturday just ended on a great note.
Sunday: I would not plan much for Sunday, being that it is usually my day to catch up on work. My only constant on Sundays is Maria's Taco Xpress.
Maria's Taco Xpress on Lamar. Courtesy of tacoxpress.com.
This place is totally what is keeping Austin weird. It has been around for 14 years and has become an institution in South Austin. Their breakfast tacos are to die for and their queso is just incredible. I came here with my Uncle and some friends for brunch one Sunday and kept coming back.
Sunday for most of us is the day to catch up on school work and prepare for the next week, and this is the perfect way to get your day going. They also bring in live music and have a Gospel Brunch every Sunday from noon to 2 p.m. What a great atmosphere to immerse yourself in!
Well, I guess Monday is coming up and the staycation is over, but it sounds like a pretty perfect weekend to me, don't you think? I realize most of the weekend revolved around food. I guess you know my secret now: I LOVE food. I love checking out new places to eat and hitting up old favorites for some great meals.
As I said before, this is just my idea of a great staycation. What are some of yours?
Trying to think of more fun things to do in Austin for your own staycation? Check out one of my other favorite blogs, 365 Things to Do in Austin, Tx.
It is clear that Budapest and other Eastern European destinations are becoming hot spots for travelers. Just by taking a look at Arthur Frommer's blog, you can see how prevalent travel deals are to Budapest and Prague, two amazing Eastern European cities, one of which I just had the pleasure of visiting.
View of Buda from the Pest side. Courtesy of Rebecca Rochman
On my trip to Budapest, I did not get the typical tourist experience. I went on a trip through Texas Hillel and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. According to the Texas Hillel website,
these were the goals of my trip:
To learn about the long history of Jewish life in Hungary and to get to know today’s Hungarian Jewish community & what it takes to rebuild Jewish life following the Holocaust and years of Communist rule.
To lend a hand by painting & refurbishing Jewish community spaces, facilitating activities for children-at-risk & repairing homes of elderly in need.
To connect with the Jewish value of pursuing justice. Discussions before and during the trip will explore our social responsibility and how Jewish values inform the decisions we all make.
To connect with the Jewish community of Budapest and with Jewish European peers. We will spend Shabbat at local congregations. You will also have the chance to interact with your Hungarian peers throughout the trip.
To bring stories and lessons of the trip back to members of the Texas Jewish community in order to help support the Austin and Hungarian community over the long term.
As you can see, this was not your typical trip involving traipsing around the city, taking bus tours, and visiting all of the historical sites. However, referring back to Frommer's blog, more and more people are taking this volunteer tourism approach to their vacations. They, like me, want to experience a city through and through while also being able to serve the community in some capacity.
Even though my trip was only a week long, I felt that I grew as a person and that I made an impact on the Hungarian Jewish community. Here are some highlights of my trip that I found enriching and educational to my life:
We went to Lake Balaton to meet with counselors of the Szarvas Camp who work with Jewish children from around the world for a summer. They help enrich their Jewish lives, being that many of these children did not even know they were Jewish until later on in life.
In one day we danced with mentally disabled adults and also played with kindergarten aged children at The Lauder School in Buda. This was by far my favorite day. The little girl I played with took my camera and had a photoshoot with her friends. Also, the most enriching part of this day was seeing that you can communicate kindness in any language. I did not speak a lick of Hungarian and neither of these groups spoke English yet we were still able to laugh, play and dance with no issues at all.
We cleaned out an old fabric shop to turn it into a charity store in which people in need can come and shop with dignity. This took hours and hours of our day, but was so rewarding to see our hardwork payoff. The shop was clean at the end of the day and everyone in our group felt great knowing that we could do our part to help out people in need.
The last weekend of the trip was an incredible experience in which our group was able to meet with teens from the international Jewish community. We were able to exchange perspectives on our religion and culture in our lives. This was also the most fun as they showed us the nightlife of Budapest and we bonded just like any other college age students would. They were so much fun and my group is trying to go to Switzerland next year to see some of them.
Part of the photo shoot done by the kindergartners at The Lauder School. Hana(pictured above) love taking pictures of everyone. Courtesy of Rebecca Rochman
Me and my new international friend, Debora, from Florence, Italy. Courtesy of Rebecca Rochman
Some of the girls on our trip smiling with the mentally disabled people we spent time and danced with. Courtesy of Rebecca Rochman.
Part of the group after a completed day of work fixing up the future charity shop. We sure were smelly at the end of the day! Courtesy of Jessica Blair Goodman.
Overall, the trip was a huge success, with both the Hungarians and the Americans mutually benefiting from each others presence. I had the most amazing experience of my life, and cannot wait to continue doing short-term service projects like this. It can get me exposure to different cultures while simultaneously allowing me to serve local communities.
Although this trip was heavily based in the Jewish community, I am sure there are many different trips that allow for short term community service. I will certainly look into those and you all will be the first to know when I compile a list.
To compare this to my previous post on eco-tourism, I think short-term service is a better option because you are helping the people. As much as I know the environment needs help too, I feel that as humanitarians, our first focus should be to help living, breathing people in need. So, shall I be the first to coin it? Let's all go out and experience some Volunteer Tourism!
Thanks for listening to my blather. Let me know about some of your favorite trips. See you next week!
Readers, prepare for a long post. Sorry for the length, but some things just need to be said!
Spring Break sure was a rollercoaster of emotions for myself and my Texas Hillel group. We traveled all the way to Budapest, Hungary to volunteer and promote goodwill for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Commitee.
This trip brought two completely opposing experiences to my life: the most enriching trip I have ever been on and the worst travel nightmare of my life.
As a firm believer in venting the bad to get to the good, let's start with these past three days of my life.
Well really, it all started on March 13 on my way to Budapest. The flight took off from Houston and everything went smoothly all the way to London(minus the fact that I got a drink spilled on my lap).
First sign of trouble: we miss our connecting flight and have to spend six more hours in the London airport at the British Airways terminal. In all honesty, this part was not so bad because it was the start of the trip so everyone was just excited and ready to get to Budapest. Additionally, British Airways hooked us up with some food vouchers. Everyone knows that free food makes happy people. So, what was an extra six hours when you have free food?! It just was not a huge issue.
BA 747 courtesy of Flickr.
Now, fast forward to the next Sunday.
The group wakes up at 5:30 a.m. to get to the Budapest airport for our flight. We catch the flight and arrive at around 9:45 a.m. in London. First leg of the journey: perfection.
We already knew we had a 4-hour layover so the waiting had begun. Not leaving until 2:20 p.m., my friends and I grabbed some breakfast and relaxed in the comfiest chairs we could find. Everything is going great.
Then, 1:45 p.m. rolls around and the departure board informs of our impending delay. Really London airport? Really?! I have certainly gotten used to waiting on the transit system by then. So some more waiting goes on and we take off around 5 p.m. Everything is perfect now. A little waiting was bad but what more could go wrong? We are already in the air! I felt great. See you in 9 hours America!
NOT!
Suddenly the pilot gets on the speaker and announces that he smelled gas in the cockpit and we were reverting back to London because he did not feel comfortable crossing the Atlantic. Oy Vey!
Now, I know it is frustrating to be delayed and even more frustrating to have to turn around, but I was alright with this. After all, I would much rather be heading back to London than sinking into the ocean. Wouldn't you? Oh yes, one other minor detail. He had to drop fuel from the plane! I freaked out when he said this. It was scary! But all in all, once we landed back in London I felt safe again.
This is when the real trouble begins. We had to work on re-booking flights for 25 people which is no easy feat to accomplish. The British Airways people were no help and basically gave us our hotel vouchers and sent us on our way.
Left to deal with this alone, our group went back to the airport at 5:30 a.m. to solve this. After 4 hours of talking and waiting and more talking and waiting, everyone was heading back to America. Some to Dallas, some to Chicago, and some to Raleigh. At least we were heading back, right? Wrong.
I was placed on the flight to Raleigh which was in a different terminal and was leaving shortly. So my small group ran to the terminal, checked our bags, rushed through security, and ran to the gate only to find that this flight was delayed for THREE HOURS! Oh yeah, and this time we were on American Airlines.
This delay assured us of one thing: we were not getting back to Houston on Monday because this delay would make us miss the last flight out of Raleigh to Houston. Our only hope was a small window of opportunity. There was a flight from Raleigh to Charlotte, North Carolina that continued on to Houston and landed at midnight. The trouble was that we had exactly one hour to make it to that flight after we landed in Raleigh.
I'll let you take a wild guess. Do you think we made it? Of course not. Looked like another hotel for the night. But wait, American Airlines put us in a hotel with no rooms left! Yet again, we were left to fend for ourselves and find our own hotel. Oy vey again!
After the hotel hunt was finished and the Hilton Raleigh-Durham Airport at Research Triangle Park took our poor souls in for the night, our ordeal was nearly finished. All we had left on our journey was a flight at 6 a.m. back to Houston and then a 2-hour drive to Austin.
Finally something went right! We even landed in Houston EARLY and after some pleading with my parents they even let me stay home for a few hours, get some sleep and do some laundry(did I mention EVERYONE in Budapest smokes?!).
All there is left to do after retelling this story is to breathe a sigh of relief. I am back in Austin(granted I am extremely behind on work), and have my health, safety and peace of mind. What more can I ask for?
This took so much our of me it's like I didn't even go to Budapest! Look to my next post for the details on the most inspiring and enriching week of my life.
The "going green" movement has finally hit the travel industry. No longer restricted to cleaning supplies, fuel emissions, and compost heaps, more and more people are integrating this movement into their daily lives as well as their vacation time.
Referred to as Eco-tourism, this latest craze is about uniting conservation, communities, and sustainable travel according to The Community Based Eco-tourism Project in Chi Phat, Cambodia.
These trips are becoming increasingly popular. Chi Phat has even be featured recently in The New York Times travel section.
"In Koh Kong province in Cambodia, new eco-friendly resorts are drawing both backpackers and more luxury-oriented travelers. Among them is 4 Rivers Floating Lodge, on the Tatai River."(New York Times March 4, 2011)
According to this article, travelers can eat by the light of fishing cages, bird-watch at sunrise, mountain bike across rocky streams and swim in a waterfall. Oh, and one other minor detail: they have to fend off rain forest leeches!
Forgive me for not jumping for joy at the thought of rain forest leeches. Traveler David Lambert might think that the bite is no worse than a mosquito bite, but I happen to cringe at the idea of some worm-like thing sucking the life out of me!
Now don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent for "going green" (after all, I do live in Austin, Tx), but I fail to see the attractiveness of running off to some remote village to camp out for a week during my vacation time. Call me old-fashioned, but I am perfectly fine with laying on a beach reading a book, hitting the slopes for a ski vacation, or touring Europe with my family.
However, society seems to disagree with me and is ready for a change.These villages like Chi Phat are unique because until recently they have had little contact with the outside world. Government is now stabilizing there, and more roads are being built, leading to this rise in environmentally-conscious travel.
These eco-tourists seem like pioneers to me though. I understand the desire to explore untouched terrain. It actually seems fascinating, even though I am not sure I personally am that adventurous.
It all seems so counter-intuitive that these pioneers come in a set up shop to explore the natural beauty of the country while simultaneously building luxury lodgings and golf courses. They finish their "roughing it" adventure then tell the world, opening up grand opportunities for big resorts and luxury vacation hot-spots. It just makes no sense to me. How are you conserving a nation by importing luxury feature from home?
If the whole point of eco-tourism is to conserve and improve the area you are visiting, why are they encouraging luxury amenities? Sure, I appreciate a good Hilton or Ritz Carlton, but can eco-tourists really tout the benefits of helping the uncharted territory of Cambodia while resting comfortably in a king-sized bed?
When breaking eco-tourism down to it's fundamentals, I completely get it. It may not be for me, but it is certainly commendable. I just feel like, if implemented improperly, this could end up being the next big ploy for big companies to "strike gold" in previously undeveloped countries.
I guess I will have to wait and see if I should be avoiding the Cambodian leeches or if I should be packing for my next luxurious vacation.
