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Explore Houston's recently expanded bike trails with Bayou City Bike Tours.
(Photo: Courtesy of Bayou City Bike Tours) |
Pedal through downtown with Bayou City Bike Tours, a two-year-old company made possible thanks to recent bike-path expansions within the city. On weekends, engaging local guides lead bikers on California beach cruisers on a leisurely three-hour tour ($40) packed with Houston history and architecture lessons. Riders make stops at various local bars and cafés, the Astros’ Minute Maid Park, and Discovery Green, the city’s newest downtown park. The compact 12-acre space squeezes in a putting green, a recreational lake, and revolving art installations like Bruce Munro’s Field of Light, consisting of frosted-glass spheres that burst with colored light at dusk. The final stretch of the tour often takes bikers to view the 36-foot-tall sculptures of the Beatles outside local artist David Adickes’s studio in the Heights neighborhood.
Plan your own outdoor adventure in Buffalo Bayou Park along the city’s main waterway. The 160-acre park is currently undergoing a $58 million facelift that should be completed by summer of 2015. Join the throngs of locals jogging, playing Frisbee, or using Houston’s new B-Cycle ($5 for 24 hours) bike-share program, on paths that snake through miles of native wildflowers and oak, magnolia, and cypress trees. Sporty types can rent kayaks ($45 to $55) from Bayou City Adventures to paddle along the narrow stream of water. Alternatively, register online for a boat tour ($30 per person) of the colony of over 250,000 Mexican free-tailed bats that, yes, reside underneath the Waugh Drive Bridge and emerge at sunset year round.
Explore the burgeoning nightlife scene around Market Square Park. This was Houston’s historic center in the 19th century, but it was later paved over to serve as a downtown parking lot. In 2010, the space was reborn as a communal park displaying public art like ceramic flower mosaics by artist Malou Flato. The change has transformed the area into a bar-hopping destination with a collection of diverse watering holes in repurposed historic spaces. Facing the park, sip a glass of red at La Carafe in one of the oldest (and supposedly haunted) buildings in Houston. Walk around the corner to Main Street and try a rare mezcal or sotol (starting at $4) at the Pastry War or wander a few doors down for a Sazerac ($10) at the New Orleans�inspired café the Honeymoon. Recently opened Moving Sidewalk, also on that block, makes cocktails with handcrafted sodas like the Little Reed Horses ($12) combining pisco, yogurt, sherry, cucumber, lemon soda, and celery seed. Just south of the park, sample an obscure Japanese or Taiwanese whiskey (starting at $8) at Public Services while lounging on a plush antique sofa in the former Houston cotton-exchange building.