We refer to our little getaways as "hot dates" because we get to leave our son with my in-laws while we get to be a couple again, at least for a few days. ;-) This trip was taken in July '07. The main purpose of our trip was to go see The Police Reunion concert... a birthday gift for my hard-working husband. Why Houston? We live in NJ and when the band comes our way later this summer, we will be in the Bahamas. After going over the band's tour schedule, the Houston concert date worked out best for us.
RESTAURANTS: No child in tow, so restaurants, here we came!
HUGO'S: Dinner on our first night was at this Mexican restaurant. Very nice looking restaurant and pretty big, so it did get noisy. The food was good and service was fast. The only thing we didn't like was our appetizer: a swiss chard quesadilla. Dinner came to $71.14 (before tip).
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| Chicken enchiladas with green chile and chihuahua cheese |
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| Shrimp wrapped with bacon over bed of chard tomatoes and white rice |
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| Capirobada, Mexico's version of bread pudding |
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| Piramide de chocolate |
SHADE: Lunch on our 2nd day in Houston. We LOVED the look of this place and we LOVED the food. Service was good. Lunch came to $44.38 (before tip).
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| Grilled pork loin with macaroni and cheese and bbq sauce |
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| Cardamom brulee |
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| Flourless chocolate torte |
IBIZA: Dinner at this Mediterranean restaurant was on our 2nd night. We LOVED it, LOVED it, LOVED it. BEST place we ate at. It's a casual chic place. It is a fairly big restaurant too, so it does get noisy when it's full. Appetizers: we shared 1 lomo, a spiced pork tenderloin and 1 san simon from Spain, a smoked cheese. We also both had the caesar salad. Dinner came to $112.27 (before tip).
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| Baseball cut beef tenderloin with red wine demi glaze and boursin cheese potato |
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| Mocha expresso bread pudding with french vanilla ice cream and jamaican rum caramel |
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| Baked bittersweet chocolate ganache cake infused with bay laurel |
BISTRO PROVENCE: Dinner on our last night was at this French restaurant. Loved the look of it. It is small so I would recommend an early dinner on a weekend night as they do not take reservations. We were a bit disappointed with our food, unfortunately. It wasn't bad, but it was just okay. The service was very good. Our waitress was truly lovely. With appetizers and desserts, dinner came to $90.55 (before tip).
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| Grilled filet of beef with wild mushroom and peppercorn sauce |
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| Veal steak |
THE POLICE REUNION CONCERT: It was GREAT! Right before the band came out, Bob Marley's "Get Up, Stand Up" started playing. That got EVERYONE on their feet. The band finally came on stage to everyone's delight. The first song they played was "Message in a Bottle". People were on their feet pretty much during the entire show.
Sting looked and sounded GREAT (love him). Stewart Copeland looked pretty good too, but he wore awful glasses (looks like his eyesight is pretty bad). The only person who didn't seem to have aged well is Andy Summers. I'm really not trying to be mean about it, just stating an opinion.
We really enjoyed the concert. We saw Sting some 6 years ago in NJ and I have to say that we enjoyed Sting on his own much much more.
The band Fiction Plane opened for them (3 young British men). We had never heard of them but thought they were pretty good and that the lead singer's voice had a little of Sting in it. We found out later that he is Sting's son! (dontcha love the internet??)
NASA'S JOHNSON SPACE CENTER: We spent about 4 hours there. You could definitely spend an entire day there. We thought it was pretty amazing. I have often wondered about the amount of money we spend on the space program, but now that I've visited JSC, I can't help thinking "how can we not?!" What they've accomplished so far is pretty unbelievable. I think it's a must-do if you're ever in Houston.
HOTEL: We stayed at the InterContinental Houston for the great rate of $78/night (thanks to Priceline). Nice hotel. Nice room although it was a bit small (as well as the bathroom). We only ate there once (breakfast) and it was good.
FINAL THOUGHTS: Houston is BIG and the traffic is horrendous despite all the lanes! This was a really relaxing little getaway for us. We had hoped to make it to Galveston but the weather didn't look good on that particular day, so we ended up going to a movie (a rarity for us these days).
