Sunday, February 13, 2011

Discovering Houston Together

Lance and I have been in Houston now for almost a month and we thought it's about time to let y'all know where we live and what we're up to!


This is our apartment building called Ventana.  It is a very nice building but is in a slightly run-down part of town.  We live within a few blocks of 2 or 3 different homeless shelters and there are several interesting businesses nearby but we love where we live and wouldn't have it any other way.  


This is the view from the rooftop of our building.  I like the big Texas wide open sky. Downtown is straight ahead about a mile up the road.  Beautiful!

We only live about 2 miles north of what is called the Texas Medical Center, which is the most concentrated area of hospitals, research centers, clinics, and schools in the world.  There are 49 medicine-related institutions, over 93,500 employees, and 6 million patients treated annually!  We feel very privileged to be part of such an amazing part of the city.  The downside: lots of traffic and parking fees.  So, we decided to be green (aka save some time and money) and use public transportation.  Our apartment is only 3 blocks from a train station so we take a nice stroll, catch the train and ride down to the medical center.  Lance walks 2 or 3 more blocks to his building and I catch a bus that takes me another mile or so to my building.

Here is our train station
Cool picture Lance took on the train. Lance is into this "hipsto" photography.
Houston is really a beautiful city--lots of gorgeous homes in gorgeous neighborhoods, cool shopping centers, endless restaurants, museums, parks, etc. The area where we live is in somewhat of a "re-development" phase so it's interesting but cool. Here are some pictures of our neighborhood:

This is what we like to call Creepy Sears.  Its actually pretty nice on the inside, just creepy from the outside.

Fiesta, a local grocery store with a Church's Chicken inside (classy!).  Lance sings Lionel Richie every time we pass it or need groceries :)
The inside of our favorite breakfast tacos place called Tacos A Go-Go.  This place is amazing! Lance is also into these panoramic photos.
Outside Tacos A Go-Go
A cool, eclectic restaurant called Natachee's
These are just a few pictures of some of the more interesting, unique places around our apartment.  

We have a new favorite place to eat called Chuy's.  It's a Mexican restaurant and it has great food and a fun environment.




We live very close to Hermann Park, which is a perfect place to run, walk, go to the zoo, and just spend time outside.  It's a pretty big park and is always full of people.  It has a big pond, a reflection pool, and several creeks with different types of beautiful gardens.  

This picture does not do any sort of justice to the park...
We took a drive to the Houston Temple, which is gorgeous!



Lastly, this weekend Lance and I ran a 5k around the Medical Center.  The proceeds were donated to the Harris County Hospital District and we had a great time running together.


Well, I think you're pretty caught up on all our activities thus far.  We'll be sure to keep you updated as we discover more of Houston!

3 comments:

  1. Oh, I love creepy Sears! It reminds of that gross, old RC Willey in Provo. All the food/restaurant pics are making me jealous! I really hope we can get down and visit you guys soon, before the heat gets too bad.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good job on the 5k guys!!! It looks like you two are keeping busy and having a great time. Good luck with everything down there! I'm sure jealous of your weather... My blog is alanandaleca.blogspot.com that way we can keep each other updated :) (I deleted my last post because I totally misspelled "it" ha ha ha

    ReplyDelete