Blogs from Houston, Texas, United States, North America

As our friends are selling their homes in the Houston area, we guess that this should be our last planned trip here. We used this last couple of weeks to really explore all that Houston has to offer. Visiting the beautiful parks, eat at incredible restaurants, ride bikes on the abundant paths, and of course visit the Space Center. Don signed us up for about every extra opportunity the center had to offer. We rode the simulator ride, toured the area, visited the historic mission control center, and spent the entire day exploring. I didn't think I would like it as much as I did. There was a plethora of information from NASA's past and how we got where we are today and a peak at the future endeavors. It really makes the mind work, will ... read more

Today is effectively the last day of our holiday, although in reality it's all a bit of a write-off as we need to be at the airport by 1.00pm. I took the opportunity for one last photography outing. Unfortunately, on the one occasion I picked a location that would not include the actual sunrise, it was when there was an amazing sunrise, but in completely the opposite direction to the cityscape that I was aiming to photograph. Some photos of the sunrise behind a building site (which was actually already at work) were not really what I was after. The early start at the building site seemed typical. Even when I left at 5.15am, the road into Houston was already heaving. People obviously start work very early here. I took my photos and then drove back ... read more

Today, we thought we would head into Downtown Houston, although our guidebook had not filled us with optimism for what we would find when we got there. We were staying about 10 miles from Downtown, but it was fast and straightforward on the Interstate 45. There was just all the lanes coming and going and I think there were up to nine lanes in each direction at one point. There's also a constant stream of raised advertising boards, most of which seemed to be for ambulance-chasing lawyers. Don't get me started on them, as that scourge of modern life has been exported to the UK now. We headed to the Montrose District first, which our guidebook had said was one of the few areas that could be explored on foot. Sorry Houston, but we were decidedly ... read more

May 2011: Finally, the day came - the day to bid farewell to my 11 year-long life in the USA. Texas has been my home for several years and very close to my heart. But the time has come to leave a lot of good friends, my home in The Woodlands, and an ecosystem my family built in a few years. All I could carry with me was a lot of good memories. Sometime back, I wrote about our visit to a farmland vacation destination near Bangalore. Here in this post, I am sharing my experience of moving from the USA to Bangalore and how I ended up getting a farmland holiday home at Bangalore instead of moving to Kerala, my home state. I moved to the USA as part of work in 1999. It was ... read more

Named after a famous district in Rome, Tivoli, travertine’s origins begin in a small, central Italian city where it was first discovered and used as the primary building material. The most well-known quarries still exist in Tivoli and Guidonia Montecelio, a city situated near Tivoli in central Rome. These quarries have been around since Ancient Roman times and still remain a prime location for travertine mining today. Italian weather has made Italy the prime location for travertine to thrive, where its usage and origins date back to the middle ages. Travertine in Roman and European Construction Guidonia Montecelio also has historical significance because the quarry produced travertine for St. Peter’s Square in Rome. Michelangelo chose travertine as the material to construct the external ribs of the dome in St. Peter’s Basilica, showing how travertine can be ... read more