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Houston is the most ethnically diverse large city in the United States, a fact that becomes clear before you've eaten your second meal. The city's 2.3 million residents speak over 145 languages, and the restaurant landscape reflects it in a way that few American cities can match. Vietnamese pho and Tex-Mex and Nigerian jollof rice and Pakistani nihari exist within blocks of each other in a city that never felt the need to theme itself for tourism. The oil and gas industry built the towers downtown, but the people who came to work them built something more interesting in every direction outward.

The Museum District clusters a remarkable number of institutions around Hermann Park, including the Museum of Fine Arts, the Natural Science Museum, the Contemporary Arts Museum and the Holocaust Museum, most within easy walking distance.

Buffalo Bayou Park, a long green corridor along the bayou that runs through the west side of downtown, has transformed a flood-prone waterway into one of the better urban walking trails in the South. Space Center Houston, about 40 kilometres south-east in Clear Lake, is where mission control still operates for the International Space Station -- it's worth the drive.