USA Guide
Texas
Hermann Park
Pleasant Hermann Park has a Japanese meditation garden and is a nice place to grab an ice cream and go for a stroll. At the park's Houston Museum of Natural Science (Mon & Wed– Sun 9am–5pm, Tues 9am–9pm; $10; 
www.hmns.org ), near the Sam Houston monument, most exhibitions are geared toward kids. But at the museum's Wiess Energy Hall, you can pour crude oil over a cluster of clear marbles to learn, for example, that Middle East light crude is similar in viscosity to West Texas intermediate crude. As well, you can decide for yourself what technologies – such as solar, wind and geothermal – are most likely to ease the world's energy crunch. The museum's Cockrell Butterfly Center (daily 9am–5pm; $8) is a giant three-story greenhouse where you can walk among exotic butterflies as they flutter around a muggy rainforest environment. In a city built to such an inhuman scale, watching delicate butterflies dance about is a refreshing change of pace.