Houston Trip Day 1

This week Caroline is speaking at the AAJA conference in Houston, TX, leading sessions on negotiation and difficult conversations, which are areas of expertise for her.

Since my schedule is flexible these days and public speaking is one of the seven skills that enables travel, I tagged along, planning to split my time between working and exploring the city. Texas is #85 on our list of 100 travel destinations, so it is nice to check off one of the destinations!

Flight to Houston

Our trip started with a JetBlue flight from JFK to Hobby Airport, negatively notable because one of the nice features of flying JetBlue is the free wifi, but on this flight it was sadly not working. I hope this was just a blip in the radar, as I’ve taken many JetBlue flights with working wifi, and I expect it will be fine on the return trip.

Of course I was able to find other ways to entertain myself on the 3.5 hour flight since I had a good book to read (Jade City by Fonda Lee – only $2.99 right now on Kindle!), podcasts on my phone, and photos to edit offline on my laptop.

I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention, assuming HOU, our arrival airport, was the main airport for the city of Houston, which is a bit far from the city center, but it turns out that HOU represents Hobby Airport, the smaller original city airport, which serves mostly as a hub for SouthWest. This was a pleasant surprise, and it was easy to get out of the airport, connect with our Lyft driver, and our fare to downtown with tip was less than $20, although that was partially because of a nice 25% off Lyft discount offer I received for this week.

As an aside, this is not the first time Lyft has coincidentally sent me a special offer right before I traveled somewhere – I suppose this is the blessing and curse of apps having access to too much information on your phone.

Staying at the Marriott Marquis

On this trip we are staying at the Marriott Marquis, because that is the location of the AAJA conference. It is located in downtown Houston, in the area of the Houston convention center as well as Toyota Center, home of the Houston Rockets, and Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros.

We have been loyal Starwood SPG members for many years, but with the recent acquisition of Starwood by Marriott, we have started staying at Marriott properties when we travel. As a result we are currently Marriott Elite Gold members, and that provides access to the Marriott Marquis M Club, which includes daily breakfast, and on weekday evenings, appetizers and desserts.

We ended up taking full advantage of the club and the food there sufficed for dinner. The spread of desserts was pretty awesome, and we stuffed ourselves a bit too much!

The highlight of the hotel is the pool deck on the 6th floor. As you can see from the photo at the very top of the post, it dimensions of the pool represent the outline of the shape of the state of Texas, and it is very family friendly. The pool deck is enormous, with lots of available chairs and towels and covered areas. There is a separate lap pool as well as a hot tub. There are also areas of sprinklers for kids, inner tubes to use to traverse the pool, and outdoor games like jenga and corn hole.

In short it is a great place to take your kids, and I wish my kids would have been able to experience it when they were younger.

Discovering the city

I’m sure that mid-August is one of the worst times to visit Houston due to the heat and humidity, but that didn’t stop me from trying to get out to explore the city a bit. Caroline was busy with her sessions and the conference, so I had a few hours to myself to explore.

I started around 9am with a walk around the convention center area and headed towards Main St, which has a light rail train service to other parts of the city. As you can see in the photo above, using the magic of photography and street signs, I was able to name a building for Caroline! In actuality this is 811 S Main St, home of KPMG among other companies, but since it doesn’t have any other sort of tagname associated with it, I make the claim!

Riding the Houston MetroRail

This area of downtown is very business oriented and not much else going on, so I decided to try a ride on the Houston MetroRail. Not knowing anything about Houston and assuming it as a car-only sort of city, I was happy to see a light-rail train system, although it has limited range. The main line running north south goes to the Museum District, Hermann Park and down to the Astrodome area, and so that is where I headed. The cost is $1.25 for a ticket good for 3 hours, and the machines accept cash and provide change. The trains also run every 6 minutes during the day.

The train itself is very well integrated into the city streets, and a great example of sharing the streets. Main St in downtown allows one lane each way for cars and one lane each way for the train, and a center median for the station platforms, with lots of flowers and vegetation making for a pleasant looking landscape. In other parts of the city, the train operates on shared lanes with cars, and as far as I can tell, didn’t clog up the roadways with traffic at all.

Hermann Park and Astrodome

I hopped off the train and explored the museum district and Hermann Park. I spent some time walking around the park, but it was too hot to spend too much time outside. I’d love to come back at some point to see the Japanese Gardens. Exiting the park I passed by the reflection pool, which is 740 feet long and 80 feet wide, and the Sam Houston Monument, dedicated in 1924 for the first president of Texas and namesake of the city it is located in.

Lastly, near Hermann Park was a place called Cancer Survivor Plaza, which had the below statue of a family traversing the ‘maze’ of cancer treatments on the route to cancer survival, which is meaningful to me after recently having my thyroid removed due to thyroid cancer.

Then I hopped back on the train to the Astrodome area. As a child of the 1970’s and 1980’s, and a New York Mets and National League baseball fan, the Astrodome is a place of legend. In fact it was often dubbed the eighth wonder of the world in its heyday. It was the first domed stadium, the first place Astroturf was used, and the location of one of the most famous New York Mets wins ever, game 6 of the 1986 National League Championship Series.

Today the Astrodome looks tired and old, and in fact looks pretty abandoned, although recently Harris County commissioners approved a $105 million plan to renovate and use it for future events.

It stands right next to NRG Stadium, home of the Houston Texans, which still looks like a beautiful stadium, more than 16 years after it was built. For many years it was known as Reliant Stadium, and has hosted 2 super bowls!

After a tour around these stadiums, I headed back to MetroRail and downtown. I explored some of the tunnel areas underground the downtown of Houston (did you know that there are 7 miles of tunnels under the city of Houston, some with restaurants and shops?) but Caroline called to say she had a break in her sessions and so I headed back to spend some time with her, and then spent the afternoon working.

======

Read on to read about the rest of our trip to Houston.

What’s your favorite Houston attraction or activity