Opinion of Houston

Above, believe it or not, Space Center Houston has longhorn cattle. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

Now that we have visited Houston, Texas for the 2026 NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits, here's my opinion of the host city.

After arriving in Houston, our first experience was with a car rental agency that ties to scam people into buying their insurance in order to rent a car. Not good. We ended up going with a name brand car rental agency.

Driving from the George Bush Intercontinental Airport wasn't too bad until we got onto the freeway system. The freeways (mainly Interstate 45) were clogged like those in Los Angeles. In fact, Houston reminded me of Los Angeles a lot. Small wonder, it is the nation's fourth largest city with a population of 6,971,000. It wasn't western in vibes, unlike Dallas and Fort Worth.

It seemed that every surface street had road work going on. The George R. Brown Convention Center was huge and a great place for the NRA convention.

We stayed in the Hobby Airport area at the Wyndham Hotel. I suspect it was once a Holiday Inn. The room was okay, but the hotel seemed to have seen better days. We had to shuttle to their sister hotel a block away for breakfast (at least the breakfasts were decent and free). 

Getting to the Space Center Houston and to Galveston wasn't too bad. But the traffic was terrible when heading to the downtown area for the NRA convention. Space Center Houston was great with a lot of neat stuff to see. Galveston was a nice place. 

We decided that we would avoid Houston for future trips. Fort Worth and Dallas were much nicer cities. We wouldn't mind visiting them again.