After a busy first day in Houston visiting the Space Center and going to an NFL game, we decided to have no plans for the second day and instead roam around and see where we ended up. We took our time enjoying the complimentary breakfast at the hotel, which is never gourmet but for some reason tastes so good because you can have whatever you like.

We then walked down to the free bus loop and spotted some amazing street art on the way. We took the bus to the Sam Houston Park which is a lovely parkland named after an early President of the Republic of Texas.

We had planned to continue walking around the central business district to find some shops or cafes but we didn’t plan this very well as it was a Sunday so everything was shut. This is something I find can vary a lot between cities as some are very much business only and completely quiet on weekend, while other cities can still have lots of activity. Since there was not a lot to see we decided to drive out to the Galleria shopping center which is the largest mall in Texas as well as being one of the largest in the entirety of the US.

The mall was impressive and it even had an indoor ice rink in the food court which is something I had never seen before. We got our favourite chicken bellagio for lunch and wandered around the stores for a few hours, although I only brought one top and some souvenirs so it was definitely more window shopping. After finishing at the mall we took advantage of a quiet evening to get some laundry done and then we walked to a local deli called Phoenicia Specialty Foods. The range of fresh foods and meals, as well as the variety of international foods they stocked was amazing and we had a great time just looking at all the tasty food on offer. We saw Yowies for sale which are a specialty Australian chocolate that was pretty funny to see in another country.

For dinner we got some barbeque although unfortunately it was probably one of the worse meals on the trip so we could have benefited from researching that a bit better. We then watched the gymnastics and baseball on TV, which sounds boring but we don’t normally get these sports broadcast in Australia so I loved being able to switch through the channels and see the athletes perform.

Even though we felt like we had a relaxing day not doing anything in particular we still did over 15,000 steps and got to see some really unique things. I think that is the beauty of travel there is always something new around the corner.