Harris County

Today we had a full day in Houston, and it did not disappoint. According to TripAdvisor, there are not a lot of sights to see, so I suggested we visit the most popular one - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

After a sleep with both air conditioning and a fan, we headed to a nearby Mexican restaurant for breakfast (it was the only place we could find that served breakfast!) before continuing onto the freeways to the nearby Johnson Space Center. We managed to get free parking to begin with (not sure why the man waved us through), and we had planned to spend at least a couple of hours at NASA. As it turned out, it far exceeded our expectations.

Once getting past security, we started with the NASA tram tour which, after a significant wait, drove up around the Space Center. It reminded me slightly of the jet base at work - we saw Rocket Park, where one of only three of the remaining actual Saturn V rockets is displayed, along with other rockets that propelled space exploration. We also walked an elevated path through the Space Vehicle Mock up Facility in Building 9, where NASA astronauts train for current missions and where scientists and engineers are developing the next generation of space exploration vehicles. My absolute favourite though was seeing the ISS Mission Control, where Flight controllers coordinate with astronauts from the many countries that participate in the International Space Station program. Maybe it was from watching all those sci-fi movies, but I was personally transfixed by it all.

After this we had some lunch and then headed back for the mission control center tram tour. At first we thought we'd taken the original tour again, but then ended up seeing the Apollo Mission Control Center from which NASA led the Gemini and Apollo missions, including the momentous first lunar landing mission and early space shuttle missions. They also played some audio from the day to re-create how the original visitors felt when they saw the original moon landing. Awesome.

After this tour, we walked through a high-fidelity shuttle replica and the original shuttle carrier aircraft NASA 905 in Independence Plaza, as well as the Starship Gallery which showed pictures and displays of previous missions to the moon (including moon rocks and replica spacecraft). My favourite displays were Mission to Mars, where it showed what it will take to travel to Mars and live on the red planet, and information about the International Space Station.

After buying some T-shirts as souvenirs, we left about five hours after we arrived and headed back to our accommodation. The traffic was not as bad as we'd expected and we ended up going back to Barnaby's for dinner again, as we'd enjoyed it so much last night. Being a Monday night, it was a lot quieter out although we did get to speak to some friendly Americans. We had an earlier night tonight since we're back on the road tomorrow.Read more