Things to do in Houston, the stoner edition, means places that hit different when your mind is wide open: quiet rooms full of color, light that changes the sky, underground water that echoes forever, rockets, dinosaurs and folk art built out of beer cans. A sesh at home first is your business. Getting there with a sober driver, a rideshare or your own two feet is just good sense. Everything below is legal, a lot of it is free, and almost all of it is a short drive from the Loop.
The Menil Collection
If you only do one thing in Houston, make it the Menil. It is a world-class museum in a quiet Montrose neighborhood, built by the collectors John and Dominique de Menil, and it is free. The main building, designed by Renzo Piano, is low and calm with natural light pouring through the ceiling. Inside you will find surrealists like Magritte and Ernst, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, ancient art, African and Oceanic objects and a room-by-room flow that never feels crowded.
The campus is the real secret. There is the Cy Twombly Gallery next door, a separate building that is basically a temple to his huge, gentle paintings. There is a Dan Flavin fluorescent light installation in a converted building nearby, glowing green, pink and blue. There is the Menil Drawing Institute. And there is the lawn, a big green under live oaks where locals lie down, read, nap and stare up at the branches. On a fall afternoon it is one of the best places in Texas.
The Rothko Chapel
A few steps from the Menil is the Rothko Chapel, a small, windowless, octagonal room holding fourteen dark paintings by Mark Rothko. It opened in 1971 and it is open to people of every faith or none. You sit on a bench, the room is silent, and the paintings slowly start doing something to you. Some people feel nothing. Some people cry. Most people leave quieter than they came in.
Outside is Barnett Newman's "Broken Obelisk," a steel sculpture standing on its point in a reflecting pool, dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. Sit by the water for a bit after you leave the chapel. Phones away inside, please. It is a place for stillness.
The James Turrell Skyspace at Rice
On the Rice University campus there is a grassy pyramid-shaped pavilion with a big square opening in its roof. It is a James Turrell skyspace called "Twilight Epiphany," and at sunrise and sunset it runs a light sequence that changes the color of the walls while the sky through the opening seems to shift into impossible colors. Sky blue becomes deep navy becomes something you do not have a name for.
It is free, the light system was upgraded recently, and you can just walk up, so check Rice's own listing for sequence times before you go. Lie back on the bench, look straight up and let it work. Then go eat in Rice Village. Turrell fans should also find his light tunnel at the Museum of Fine Arts, which connects two of the buildings underground in a wash of shifting color.
The Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern
Under Buffalo Bayou Park sits an old underground drinking-water reservoir from the 1920s, rediscovered and opened to the public. Picture a dark room the size of a few football fields, filled with a couple hundred tall concrete columns standing in a few inches of still water. Sounds echo for a long, long time. It is beautiful and a little spooky.
The Cistern runs guided tours and rotating art installations with light and sound, and tickets are the way in. Book ahead. It is cool down there in every sense, which makes it a great summer move.
Buffalo Bayou Park and the Waugh Drive Bats
Buffalo Bayou Park is the green ribbon running west from downtown along the bayou: trails, lawns, sculpture, kayak launches, dog parks and the best skyline views in town. Walk it at golden hour, when the downtown towers start to glow and the joggers come out.
Then, right around dusk, head to the Waugh Drive bridge. A big colony of Mexican free-tailed bats lives under it, and on warm evenings they pour out in a long dark ribbon to go hunt bugs over the city. People gather on the viewing area to watch. It is free, it is wild and it is one of those only-in-Houston things nobody tells visitors about.
Houston Museum of Natural Science
HMNS in the Museum District is the kind of place you can spend a whole day in. The paleontology hall is massive, with dinosaur skeletons posed like they are mid-fight. The gem and mineral hall glows in the dark in a way that will stop you in your tracks. There is a butterfly center inside a glass cone, with thousands of butterflies landing on strangers. And there is the planetarium and a giant screen theater, which are exactly as good as you hope they are.
Go on a weekday afternoon when the school groups have cleared out. See our Museum District guide for everything nearby.
Space Center Houston
"Houston" was the first word spoken from the surface of the Moon. Space Center Houston, the official visitor center for NASA's Johnson Space Center, is out in Clear Lake, a solid drive southeast of downtown. Inside you get spacecraft, moon rocks, astronaut gear and exhibits on everything from Apollo to future missions.
The move is the tram tour onto the actual Johnson Space Center campus. You can see a historic mission control room and a giant Saturn V rocket lying on its side in its own building. Standing next to it, you understand how impossibly big and brave the whole thing was. Outside, a shuttle replica sits on top of a real 747 carrier plane, and you can walk through both. Plan a full day, and do not drive yourself if you are not clear-headed. It is a freeway trip each way.
Hermann Park
Hermann Park is Houston's big front yard, right next to the Museum District. There is the Japanese Garden with its koi and quiet paths, McGovern Lake with pedal boats, the Hermann Park Railroad, the zoo, the McGovern Centennial Gardens with its spiral hill, and Miller Outdoor Theatre, where free shows happen on a lawn under the sky. Grab a spot on the hill, spread out a blanket and let the night happen.
The Orange Show and Smither Park
The Orange Show is one of the strangest and most joyful places in Texas. A Houston postal worker named Jeff McKissack spent years building a maze-like monument to the orange out of found objects, tiles, wagon wheels, mannequins and steel. It is part carnival, part shrine, part fever dream, and it opened to the public in 1979, shortly before he died. The nonprofit that preserves it grew into the Orange Show Center for Visionary Art, which is also behind Houston's famous Art Car Parade tradition.
Next door, Smither Park is a free folk art park covered in mosaics by hundreds of artists: broken plates, mirror shards, shells and glass worked into walls, benches and an amphitheater. Plan to spend an hour wandering both and taking pictures of every square inch.
The Beer Can House
In a quiet street off Memorial Drive is the Beer Can House, a regular old house that a retired upholsterer named John Milkovisch covered in flattened beer cans, pull tabs and garlands made of can parts, starting in the late 1960s. When the wind blows, the whole thing jingles. It is folk art, it is a joke that turned into a masterpiece, and it is very, very Houston. The Orange Show folks look after it too. It is a short hop from Washington Avenue and Rice Military.
The Museum of Fine Arts and the CAMH
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is one of the biggest art museums in the country, spread over several buildings, with everything from old masters to contemporary work. The newer Kinder Building is all modern and contemporary, and it is a stunner. Across the street, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston sits in a steel parallelogram of a building and shows rotating contemporary exhibitions, usually with free admission. Do them back to back on a hot afternoon.
Free Art Outdoors
- Murals in EaDo. The warehouses east of downtown are covered in murals, some huge, some tucked in alleys. See the EaDo guide.
- The Waterwall. A giant horseshoe-shaped fountain in Uptown with water roaring down its walls. Stand in the middle and feel tiny. See the Galleria and Uptown guide.
- Project Row Houses. Art installations inside a row of shotgun houses in Third Ward. See the Third Ward guide.
- Sawyer Yards. A huge complex of artist studios in old warehouses by Washington Avenue. Open studio days are a great wander.
Record Stores and Arcades
Houston has a strong set of independent record stores, mostly scattered through Montrose, the Heights and the near Northside. The good ones have a deep local section, used bins that reward patience and staff who will happily talk you into a DJ Screw tape or a Texas blues record you have never heard of. Spend an hour flipping. It is the most relaxing thing you can do inside a building.
For arcades, look for the barcade style places where you buy a drink, grab a pocketful of credits and play old-school cabinets, pinball and big group games. There are a few around the Inner Loop and the suburbs, and the classic movie theater arcades are still around too. Bring friends, pick a high-score rival and do not let them win.
Day Trips
- Galveston. About an hour south on I-45. The Seawall, the Strand, old Victorian houses and a lot of fried seafood. The water is brown and nobody cares.
- Kemah. A boardwalk with rides and a waterfront on the way to Galveston. Corny, fun and good with a crowd.
- Brenham and the Hill Country edges. Rolling hills, bluebonnets in spring and a famous ice cream town. A great drive if somebody else is driving.
Our Perfect Houston Day
- Breakfast tacos in the Heights or Montrose. See the munchies guide.
- The Menil and the Rothko Chapel, then nap on the Menil lawn.
- Lunch on Bellaire Boulevard, pho or dumplings.
- Natural science museum, dinosaurs and gems in the AC.
- Sunset at the Turrell skyspace at Rice.
- Dinner somewhere loud in Midtown or EaDo.
- A late movie at the River Oaks Theatre. See the movie theaters guide.
- Late-night food on the way home. See the late-night guide.
