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Keith’s Blog – December 2017

Keith's Blog

Welcome Fans, Friends, and Visitors

Hi. December is a joyous month. Chanukah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa help to provide joy and hope for a better future for most everyone. Regardless of your religion or lack of, race, ethnicity, gender preference, and gender, it is a time when we often come together to share happiness.

Weather in Houston
December is Houston’s second coldest month. Be prepared to wear a sweater, coat, or both. The monthly average high temperature is 65 degrees Fahrenheit/18 degrees Centigrade. The monthly average low temperature is 47 degrees Fahrenheit/6 degrees Centigrade, and the mean is 56 degrees Fahrenheit/13 degrees Centigrade. The average rainfall is 3.78 inches/9.6 centimeters. It is the ninth wettest month of the year.

 


Holiday Lights Tours
December sees an uptick in our tour business because of the holidays. We offer 9 different Holiday Lights Tours. Four tours are 3 hours, three tours are 4-hours, one tour is 5-hours, and one tour is 7-hours. The 5-hour tour goes to Texas City and Galveston. The 7-hour tour goes to Santa’s Wonderland in College Station. This area has over 1 million lights.

Tour A, for 3 hours, is far and away the most popular of the Holiday Lights Tour. It includes the Galleria, River Oaks, Tanglewood, Uptown Park, River Oaks District, Highland Village, and Greenway Plaza. Our other three hour tours can include the various Heights, ethnic minority areas, the elite Green Tea subdivision in Pearland, Candlelight Plaza, Prestonwood Forest, and more communities. The 3-hour tours are normally from 6:30 to 9:30 PM, although we can be flexible. Remember that sunset takes place at about 5:30 PM so you want to start sometime thereafter. They normally have one stop at a Starbucks for bathrooms and holiday drinks. Visit our website to see more of the detailed descriptions.

Click here for more information on our Holiday Lights Tours.

Mexican Restaurant Tours
December is a good month to also go on a comfort food tour. We offer several food and drink tours including Mexican Restaurant Tours. You can choose the length and how many restaurants that you want to visit and how much you want to eat. We take you to a historic Mexican restaurants that are generally considered among the best in Houston. All of the restaurants were found in the 1900s. Some specialize in entrees, some in appetizers, some in margaritas. We recommend that you select one thing, for example nachos or quesadillas, that you can compare and contrast at each restaurant and still have more space in your stomach to try some more at the next restaurant. Many of the Mexican restaurants are beautifully decorated for the holidays. Visit our website to see what restaurants we include on such a tour and customize it.

Click here for more information on our Mexican Restaurant Tours..

Galveston Tours
Galveston has a certain mystique, similar to New Orleans, but on a 1/10 size. Like New Orleans, it was a port city, the state’s wealthiest city and full of immigrants and sailors coming into it. It was the largest city in Texas in 1870 and 1880. Prostitution and gambling thrived during the years that Galveston was an open city. Hurricanes have repeated beaten it down only for the city to bounce back. The greatest architect in Texas history designed some of the most impressive buildings in the state from 1872 to 1900. Galveston is currently experiencing its first growth in six decades. Hurricane Ike in 2008 resulted in people reinvesting in Galveston. We offer Galveston tours from 5 to 12 hours that can include a boat ride to see dolphins and a sunken ship in Galveston Bay, museums, mansion homes to tour, historical homes from the 1830s and 1840s to stop and photograph, movies to watch titled “The Great Storm” and or “The Pirate Island of Jean Lafitte,” seeing tree sculptures, great food and drink to consume, and exploring different neighborhoods. December is a particularly good time to visit because of the festival Dickens on the Strand. It started in 1974 and is held on the first weekend in December. A tradition is a descendant of the great British author Charles Dickens leads the parade and people dress in costumes from the era of Dickens’s best selling book The Christmas Carol. You will have a bloody good time.

Click here for more information on our Galveston Tours.


Monthly Special – Discounted by 23 to 46% Based on the Number of People
The monthly special for December is a Hermann Park and Museums Walking Tour. This 2.5-hour tour focuses on going through Houston’s most famous and popular park, Hermann Park. It was named after Houston’s greatest benefactor, George Hermann. We will stroll through the Japanese Gardens and the Cheri Flores Garden Pavilion up Houston’s version of the Tower of Babel. We will see over one dozen statues including several busts of Latin American revolutionary leaders, Robert Burns, Confucius, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the most famous statue in Houston: General Sam Houston. Walk past the Houston Zoo, 18-hole golf course, McGovern Lake, the Miller Outdoor Theater (MOT), the Houston Museum of Natural Science (HMNS), the children’s train, picnic areas, and more. Have a great time in one of our most beautiful parks. Bring a jacket depending on the weather. For families, you will have a new destination for your activities. There is so much to do in Hermann Park.

Click here for more information about this Hermann Park and Museums Walking Tour.

See you on a tour.

Sincerely,

Keith Rosen
Houston Historical Tours
P. O. Box 262404
Houston, Texas 77207-2404
(713) 392-0867
(713) 643-4086 Fax
houstonhistory@aol.com
www.houstonhistoricaltours.com

 

Keith’s Blog – Mid-November 2017

Keith's Blog

Welcome Fans, Friends, and Visitors

Who wants to earn a free tour? Read on down.

Perhaps, some of you have heard about a recent Houston athletic team winning and being crowned the champions of their sport. On Wednesday, November 1st, when the Houston Astros won game seven over the Los Angeles Dodgers, people who had never before paid attention to sports, baseball, or the Astros suddenly knew who won and who the stars were who aligned on the team to bring home the crown. The Astros became every Houstonian’s sons as people were prone to call them “My boys” while the Dodgers became orphans.

If you watched or listened to game 5 on October 29th, your heart might have raced a little faster than normal. The Astros came from behind to tie the game in the 4th, tie it again in the 5th, come from behind and take the lead in the 7th, lose the lead in the 9th for another tied score, and finally pull out a victory in the 10th. At least one team scored in all but three innings. No one could say that game 5 was boring. Furthermore, it put the Astros up by one game with the remaining games to be played in Los Angeles. If the Astros had lost this game, the path to victory in enemy territory, Dodgers Stadium, would be difficult.

In a somewhat strange and perverse way, the two biggest stories of the year so far in Houston are:

  • Hurricane Harvey from August 25th – 29th and its aftermath with tens of thousands, if not millions, of people going to shelters and sites to receive benefits.
  • The Houston Astros in the World Series from October 24th – November 1st and its aftermath with over 1 million people coming out to celebrate their achievement with the November 4th parade.

One event engendered despair, grieving, sorrow, frustration, and disbelief. The other event brought on jubilation, celebrations, joy, and hope.

Both events bought out price gougers, first of gasoline and water, second for jerseys and Astros paraphernalia. The first led to greater anger and the resignation of having to buy a need, the second led to acceptance and enthusiastic purchases of a want. How strange?

I have heard many people refer to the Astros’s first World Series victory, as the first championship team in Houston history. Alas, this is far from the truth. Houston has had one dozen previous championship professional teams. They have been in five different sports in five different decades now that the Astros became the first major league baseball team from Houston to win a championship.

 

Here is your challenge to earn a free tour.

Identify the Houston championship team from each of the years below:

  1. 1960
  2. 1961
  3. 1974
  4. 1975
  5. 1994
  6. 1995
  7. 1997
  8. 1998
  9. 1999
  10. 2000
  11. 2006
  12. 2007

 

To submit your answer, send an email to me at houstonhistory@aol.com. In the email, please provide me with the following information:

  • Your name:
  • Your email adddress:
  • Your phone number:
  • Your answer to the challenge:

 

Good luck! Hint: Every team won at least two consecutive championships. Perhaps, this is a good omen for the Astros.

The first person to answer all the championship teams correctly in the given years by the end of November will win a BOGO. Buy one tour, get one tour free of an equal or lesser amount of a local tour that does not have additional expenses. For example, pay for a tour for 1 person, and the other person is free. A beer tour or any food tour or Space Center Houston tour have additional expenses. You can apply your victorious BOGO to one of these tours or any other local tour if you want to pay for the additional expenses to the third party.

Your BOGO must be redeemed by December 31, 2017.

Sincerely,

Keith Rosen
Houston Historical Tours
P. O. Box 262404
Houston, Texas 77207-2404
(713) 392-0867
(713) 643-4086 Fax
houstonhistory@aol.com
www.houstonhistoricaltours.com

 

Keith’s Blog – November 2017

Keith's Blog

Welcome Fans, Friends, and Visitors

Hi.  November is often a slower month than those months that surround it.  Thus, it is easier to schedule a personal tour.  With the Thanksgiving holiday and people departing to be with friends and family in other cities and states as well as those who are hosting friends and family and watching lots of football, less people are going on tours.  Throw in Black Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving and many people have already been planning their alternative activities.

We still have more quilting tours at the beginning of the month.

Weather
The weather is pleasant, if a little cool.  You might want to wear a light jacket.  This is a wonderful month to go on any of the tours that involve being outside.

November is Houston’s fourth coldest month.  Be prepared to wear a sweater or jacket.  The monthly average high temperature is 73 degrees Fahrenheit/23 degrees Centigrade.  The monthly average low temperature is 53 degrees Fahrenheit/12 degrees Centigrade, and the mean is 63 degrees Fahrenheit/17 degrees Centigrade.  The average rainfall is 4.54 inches/11.5 centimeters.  It is tied for the fifth wettest month of the year.

Wine Tours
November is a great month to go on a wine tour.  See the countryside, sit outside sipping one sample of wine after another at a variety of wineries, possibly listening to a musical performer, and all without sweating – what a wonderful way to spend a day!  We offer 5 different winery tours that venture into different directions to a total of 14 wineries + 2 wine tasting rooms = 16 sites.  Eleven of the wineries have their vineyards attached to the winery.  It cannot get much fresher than when you see where your product has been grown.  Sometimes, you can walk or stagger through the vineyards.  You can go to 1 to 4 wineries on these tours.  The tours can last from 3 hours one close winery to 12 hours for 4 more remote wineries.  Most wineries offer 4 different samples from dry, semi-dry, sweet, and dessert wines.  All of these wineries or tasting rooms are in or close to rural towns with names like Brenham, Chappell Hill, Burton, Bryan, College Station, Old Town Spring, Montgomery, Plantersville, Anahuac, Sour Lake, Winnie, Anahuac, and Baytown.  If you wish to purchase any bottles of wine, the prices of such bottles are generally much cheaper than going to a store.  Many of these wines are only available on site or in local stores.  Stock up for the holidays.  You must be at least 21 years of age to go on this tour.

Click here for more information about our Wine Tours.

San Jacinto State Park Tours
Another popular tour for the month of November is going out to the San Jacinto State Park.  This is normally a six-hour tour.  Go inside the San Jacinto Monument, Observation Deck, the San Jacinto Museum of History, watch the Charlton Heston narrated movie “Texas Forever!  The Battle of of San Jacinto” and see the diorama. The Monument is the tallest monument in the United States at 567 feet/173 meters. It is taller than the Washington Monument because a Star of Texas caps it. This is the most important battle of Texas’s War of Independence where on April 21, 1836, Texas won its independence from Mexico and captures Santa Anna. This tour also includes going onto and inside the Battleship Texas, the only surviving US battleship from both World War I and II and the only one that survives that served in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans during WW II. It was the first ship adapted to serve as an aircraft carrier. A lot of history is here. For groups of 14 or fewer people in a van or sedan, we will also go on a ferry boat. The ferry cannot have buses on it. Lunch is at a great restaurant that specializes in seafood and with huge windows with the best view of the Houston Ship Channel. You will watch barges and oil tankers passing us. If we skip going onto the Battleship Texas, the tour can be shortened to five hours.

Click here for more information about our San Jacinto State Park Tours.

City Tours
Of course, if you are visiting Houston for the first time, or new to Houston and still learning your way around, go on one of our city tours. You have 9 options ranging from 2 to 9 hours, depending on how much you want to do and see. Three hour hour tours and longer generally have one stop per hour. Four hour tours and longer have a stop for lunch.  For groups of 10 or fewer people, on Monday through Friday, we include a trek into a 59th floor observation and about a 3-block walk through the underground tunnels of Houston. Houston has over 7.5 miles/12.1 kilometers of pedestrian tunnels. These help form a city underneath downtown Houston with over 500 businesses and 10 food courts. They are air conditioned or heated and dry. They are a secret gem in Houston. These can cover from about 20 to 60 miles/32 to 97 kilometers.

Click here for more information about our City Tours.


Monthly Special – Discounted by 23 to 46% Based on the Number of People
The monthly special for November is a Houston Heights Walking Tour.  This 2.5-hour tour focuses on going through the old downtown area of the Houston Heights, the area where serial killer Dean Corll lived, by beautiful old Victorian homes, Marmion Park, Opera in the Heights, Heights Theater, where a reservoir exists, one of the best spice shops in Houston, Penzeys, can be found and more. The weather is crisp, the leaves are different colors, and the big oak trees are imposing. You will find yourself returning to the Houston Heights to go shopping and eating now that you know what it has to offer.

Click here for more information about a Houston Heights Walking Tour.

See you on a tour.

Sincerely,

Keith Rosen
Houston Historical Tours
P. O. Box 262404
Houston, Texas 77207-2404
(713) 392-0867
(713) 643-4086 Fax
houstonhistory@aol.com
www.houstonhistoricaltours.com

 

Keith’s Blog – October 2017

Keith's Blog

Welcome Fans, Friends, and Visitors,

Hi.  October is generally our busiest month. The reasons for this are three-fold:

1.  October has arguably the best weather of any month in the year. It is moderate. The temperatures are generally in the 70s and 80s Fahrenheit/20s Centigrade. The humidity starts to fall in autumn. The most active hurricane period ends in September.  We now have safe and pleasant weather. It is a relief after 5 months, May through September, of oppressive heat and humidity.

2.  We have Halloween on October 31st. Houston Historical Tours offers nine different haunted tours. This includes 6 driving tours of 3.5-hours and 3 downtown walking tours of 2, 3, and 4 hours. We conduct on average of about 2 haunted tours per month from November to September. However, in October, associated with Halloween’s folklore of spooks, ghosts, orbs, and apparitions, we conduct 10 to 15 such tours. Most such tours start at 7:00 PM, but we are flexible and can start the tours at almost any time as long as we finish before midnight. You can read more about these haunted tours further in the blog.

3.   Houston has the world’s largest quilt festival. The International Quilt Festival Houston has over 60,000 people coming from all over the world to look at, buy, sell, and display quilts as well as to buy fabrics, machines, patterns, take lessons, and more. We conduct an average of about 2 quilt tours from December through September. However, quilters start arriving a week before the Quilt Festival begins and some stay after it ends. We conduct about 10 quilt tours during the latter half of October and the beginning of November. We offer eight different 8-hour quilting tours across Houston and small towns within 110 miles/177 kilometers and week long quilting tours across Texas and Louisiana. You can read more about these quilt tours further in the blog.

Hurricane Harvey – August 2017
Over the past 1.5 months, I have had several people for whom I gave tours in past years write to me to inquire about me. Thank you for your concern. I am alive and well, well reasonably well – diabetes, high blood pressure, and cholesterol. None of these issues started with Hurricane Harvey. LOL. Hurricane Harvey drenched us for five days from Friday, August 25 to Tuesday, August 29. My house did not suffer any flooding even though a gully is my boundary in the backyard on the west side and a major bayou is three houses from my house on the north side. I never lost electricity or air conditioning. My house suffered from some roof leakage at the points where the flashing met the shingles and the water went under the flashing. I had three buckets of water collecting rainfall in my den on August 29th. The next day on August 30th, I found the only hardware store open for miles/kilometers, bought what I needed, got one of my ladders, and climbed onto the roof. I was probably the fattest, old, white guy, who spoke primarily English within 1,000 miles/1,600 kilometers making roof repairs. So far, so good. No more water has leaked into my house and we have received rain a few more times.

Many people from around the world have seen the destruction of portions of Houston. Indeed, many individuals and families have lost a lifetime of achievements. However, many parts of Houston suffered little or no damage. My lawn is now greener, my pool had more water added to it, and my utility bills for water and electricity went down. I do not wish for another hurricane, but there were some positive effects. Perhaps, the destruction will have the most positive effects if it motivates our penny-pinching politicians to spend money on infrastructure for flood control that has been ignored for over three generations. The only two reservoirs, the Barker and Addicks, to hold water to protect Houston from flooding were built in the 1940s.

Unfortunately, the voices of gloom and doom and negativity resulted in several tours being canceled, not scheduled, and rescheduled. Houston is bouncing back and I have been leading tours as if nothing has happened. I can give you a tour and you would not know that a hurricane ever existed and visited Houston. On the other hand, many people want to see examples of the destruction and I can show that as well.

Until August 2017, I thought Harvey was a six foot, three and one-half inch tall invisible rabbit that was Jimmy Stewart’s best friend and meant no harm to anyone in the 1950 comedy.

Haunted Tours
Our driving tours include going to abandoned cemeteries, bars where people have been murdered or committed suicide, former hotels and hospitals where people were killed and died, drive by the mansion homes of River Oaks where people were murdered, and so much more. Two driving tours go to other cities about 30 miles/48 kilometers from Houston in Katy and Spring. Two tours specialize in only going to abandoned and lost cemeteries that may be hidden in jungle-like areas. Three tours are children friendly with no stops at haunted bars. The three downtown Walking Tours are of 2, 3, and 4 hours with the 4 hour tour having everything that the 2 and 3 hour tours have. This tour goes into the oldest operation building in downtown Houston. It was built in 1860, over 150 years ago and just 24 years after Houston was found. The walking tours focus on the oldest parts of Houston where you will see Allen’s Landing, the site where the Allen family landed in 1836 to become the first settlers of Houston.

Click here for more information about our Haunted Tours.

Quilt Festival Houston – 1st Weekend in November Annually
Quilters begin arriving about 1 week before the Quilt Festival begins.  It is a five day event beginning on a Wednesday night with classes starting at 5:00 PM and the Preview Night from 7:00 to 10:00 PM.  After that, the Festival begins at 10:00 AM each day through Sunday.  It is held in the George R. Brown (GRB) Convention Center.  This is a one-quarter of a mile/0.4 kilometers long building.  It has five halls, A through E, and all five halls are used.  Be prepared to walk miles/kilometers to see the thousands of quilts.  The daily price is extremely reasonable:  only $12.00 for adults and $9.00 for seniors, children, and military.  Full show passes are available for a discounted price, also.  Nothing like this is comparable in the world!

We offer 9 different quilt tours, A through  with one primarily in Houston and the other 8 tours like a spokes wheel going out in different directions.  On Tour D, we visit the Texas Quilt Museum in La Grange, Texas.  These are great tours to explore the Texas countryside, visit some towns, and buy fabrics and supplies and great prices.  Enjoy!

Click here for more information about our quilt tours.

Wine Tours
The state of Texas has designated October as Texas Wine Month. Check our website for dozens of wine tour opportunities. We take people to a total of 16 wineries and tasting rooms in 13 different cities. We offer 5 different geographic located wine tours with from 1 to 4 wineries and or tasting rooms on them. The average winery tour includes 4 tastings at each winery. The tours can last from 3 to 12 hours depending on how many wineries you want to visit and how far you want to travel. You must be at least 21 years of age to go on this tour. Salud/La’ chaim/Cin cin.

Click here for more information about our wine tours.

Brewery Tours
October is the month for Oktoberfest. It was called Wurstfest in earlier years. Although this is supposed to be a celebration of sausage, it makes for a good excuse for drinking beer. In the greater Houston area, we now have over 25 craft or micro-breweries. Check our website for dozens of brewery tour opportunities. These can range from 2 to 10 hours with one to six breweries in one day. A couple of breweries have their own restaurants on the properties. You must be at least 21 years of age to go on this tour. Prost/Cheers/Ariba/Sante, Skal/Slainte.

Click here for more information about our brewery tours.

Monthly Special – Discounted by 23 to 46% Based on the Number of People
The monthly special for October is Downtown Walking Tour D. This 2.5-hour tour focuses on going through the Buffalo Bayou area, Sesquicentennial Park, Market Square Park, and Tranquility Park, as well as by the many performance halls for opera, ballet, the symphony, plays, and concerts, and seeing many statues including those of George Bush I and James Baker. This is a great month to be outside walking.

Click here for more information about our Downtown Walking Tour D.

See you on a tour.

Sincerely,

Keith Rosen
Houston Historical Tours
P. O. Box 262404
Houston, Texas 77207-2404
(713) 392-0867
(713) 643-4086 Fax
houstonhistory@aol.com
www.houstonhistoricaltours.com