Consider taking a break from shopping with a meal at the homey Empire Cafe, which is set inside a converted vintage service station and offers splendid pizza, hearty frittatas and such breakfast treats as hot polenta with honey-cream and toasted almonds. As you head farther west along Westheimer, you'll pass a number of antique shops and funky boutiques. At the epicenter, where Westheimer Road crosses Montrose Boulevard, you're within walking distance of countless gay bars and gay-friendly restaurants. Houston's gay scene is centered in Montrose, an attractive neighborhood a couple of miles southwest of downtown, with a mix of early 20th-century homes and cottages and several newer pockets of condos and apartments.
(No joke: Spray Calvin Klein's Obsession on your shoulder and the butterflies won't leave you alone!) Check out the Cockrell Butterfly Center, which has a 25,000-square-foot tropical rainforest complete with butterflies. At the northern tip of Hermann Park lies the Houston Museum of Natural Science, one of the nation's most-visited museums. And the city's Holocaust Museum has changing exhibits (which sometimes touch on the persecution of gays and lesbians) as well as a permanent display that includes personal effects recovered from a Polish concentration camp. The Contemporary Arts Museum hosts reputable temporary exhibitions. Don't miss the Museum of Fine Arts, with its concentration of Impressionists, as well as Italian and Spanish Renaissance, pieces. Many of the city's engaging attractions lie in the Museum District, south of downtown, anchored by lush Hermann Park.
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Within walking distance are the Menil's Collection Cy Twombly Gallery, plus two independent facilities: the Rothko Chapel, which contains 14 large-scale Mark Rothko paintings commissioned for the chapel and a peaceful reflecting pool and plaza. Cultural highlights include the Menil Collection, with works by Warhol, Leger, and Picasso in a space designed in 1987 by Renzo Piano.
Houston acts as a cultural capital bridging the South and Southwest, with some of the best museums in the country. Other central Houston neighborhoods, including gay-popular Montrose and up-and-coming Midtown, have also seen big changes for the better, helping turn the nation's fourth-largest city into a lively and downright stylish getaway. Its once staid, business-oriented downtown has become a trendy district of restaurants, clubs, shops, condos and hip hotels, along with an architecturally stunning baseball stadium. The (Not So) Straight Facts About Houston Your guide to the gay side of the Bayou CityĪ cosmopolitan city that blends Western and Southern heritage and style, Houston has been one of America's great boomtowns of the past decade.