Houston

Houston needs 2 days: touring Space Center Houston, NASA's official visitor center with replica space capsules and the original Apollo mission control room, on one, and visiting the Houston Museum of Natural Science, with its Foucault pendulum and one of the world's largest sundials, on the other. October-April avoids the humid Gulf Coast summer heat. It's mid-priced for a major US city. It's the country's fourth most populous city and home to NASA's Mission Control Center since 1965 -hence the phrase 'Houston, we have a problem'-, as well as the world center of the oil industry and the largest medical district on the planet.