I love Texas! I have been declared by some of my marvelous Texan friends an 'official Texan' twice, in 1986 and in 2001. The name Texas evokes not only a geographical location but also a special people with a special attitude to life, and this is what is hard to get hold of. Everything is bigger in Texas. Cotton, cattle and oil built the Texan fortune, but technology, trade and tourism now form the backbone of its economic might. Regional cuisine, like most of Texan culture, is enriched by an age-old Mexican heritage.

Tranquility Park, Houston

Houston and Dallas will show you the dynamic modern form of Texas. Houston is a diverse city that spreads its borders as a mega-metropolis, filled with monster trucks on superhighways, awe-inspiring glass-and-steel skyscrapers, enormous oil plants and the largest strip malls in the country. The Astrodome was the first mammoth indoor arena of its kind. Underground, hundreds of shops and restaurants line the Houston Tunnel System, largest indoor pedestrian tunnel system in the U.S. Well, I can't think of Houston without remembering the 60's, when the only think I knew about the city was that it hosted NASA's Apollo Mission Control. Dallas is a forest of towers sheathed in silver or bronze mirror-glass, which reflect the dawn as more golden, the noon's blue sky more blue, and the rosy sunset blood red.