Monthly Travel and Life Recap: February 2025

Welcome to February’s travel and life recap.

We stuck around Houston for most of February, doing local things and eating at local joints.

Except booking a last minute cruise to Progresso, Mexico to see the one of the new 7 Wonders of the World—more on that later.

Lets dive in.

Experience local Houston entertainment

When it comes to access to entertainment and activities, here’s the big difference I’ve noticed between a small city like Perth and a huge city like Houston:

When something big is happening in Perth (e.g. city marathon, Cirque du soleil, a broadway show at Crown theatres), everyone knows about it—because not that many events and activities come to Perth

In Houston, big and small events and activities are happening every day of the year, everywhere.

Houston has a sporting team in all major American sporting events (football, baseball, basketball). It has a big theatre and museum district that plays hosts to big name comedy shows, concerts, Broadway musicals and theatrical plays regularly.

Houston is also a big and diverse enough a city to attract off-the-beaten path indie events and shows.

Because of all this, unless you’re looking out for it. It’s hard to keep up with what’s on offer.

So this year, we’ve been making a bigger effort in staying in the know and getting to events and shows more often.

In February, we attended two shows:

A one-night GABRIEL IGLESIAS comedy special at Toyota Center

Coincidentally on Valentine’s day. It was an entertaining night out with lots Texas and Houston jokes.

While we were there for funny man Gabriel Iglesias, his comedian friends who joined him on his roadshow were also pretty funny.

A NSFW burlesque parody, The Empire Strips Back.

I’ll be honest, it was one of the more unusual shows I’ve ever been to.

I’ve watched most of the Star Wars movies, and even some of the new ones. But I’m not a Star Wars nerd, so some of the jokes and antics went over my head.

Overall, the show was entertaining and funny. It was split in two part with a brief intermission, and I would say I enjoyed the second half much better.

The costuming, lighting and stage setup was quite impressive especially since it looks like more of an indie event.

For the Star War nerds out there, I can see why this show is so popular—it’s a real nerd’s fantasy!

Dining out in Houston

As the 5th largest city in the US, Houston is not short on diversity of food and restaurants to try.

We’ve been more intentional with dining out, especially focusing on cuisines or styles of food that isn’t common to come by in Australia.

Here were some of the highlights:

• Sunday brunch with friends at Lucille’s for some Southern comfort food.
• Took a friend who’s never had ramen to try ramen for her first time. Tamashi isn’t the best in town, but somewhere convenient when I’m looking for a warm soup noodle in the winter.
• Ramen Tatsutya is probably our favourite convenient ramen place in Houston. The thick and savoury tonkatsu broth is pretty on point.
• Pappasito’s Cantina, a Tex-mex restaurant that’s part of the popular Pappas family of chain restaurants in Houston. We went to Pappasito’s Cantina before the Gabriel Iglesias comedy show since it was right across the road from Toyota Center—and it looks like the rest of the comedy show attendees had the same idea!
• Norigami, a Japanese restaurant in Houston known for it’s sushi handrolls. It was good, but pricey. Overall we preferred Kira (another sushi handroll restaurant in Houston) for the service, price and food.
• Toca Madera, a premium Mexican steakhouse in Houston. Definitely the most expensive meal on the list, but we got it for a 45% discount by stacking some deals, so it ended being a great price. Food was tasty, but for the price it’s not somewhere we would return to.
• Candente, you typical neighborhood Tex-Mex restaurant. Drinks and food at happy hour was great value. I’m not a fan of Tex-Mex food, but I’ve grown to appreciate it and like certain aspects (Margaritas and fajitas!). Something that I’ll miss when we move back to Australia—daily happy hours, including on weekends in some places!
• The Blind Goat, a modern Vietnamese fusion restaurant by US Masterchef winner Christine Ha, who is actual a blind cook! While it’s suppose to be a Vietnamese restaurant, I would say the dishes are more Asian fusion, borrowing tastes from different parts of Asia.

Taking our first Disney Cruise to Mexico

The travel highlight for February was deciding to take a spontaneous 4-day cruise from Galveston to Mexico.

We’ve never been on a cruise before but we’ve heard several expat families who really enjoyed the Disney Cruise Line out of Galveston port in Texas.

The main appeal to take the cruise was two fold—we do enjoy Disney and I was keen to visit the the Chichen Itza in Mexico

If not for living in Houston, I’m not sure if Mexico would be high on my travel bucket list. But living it makes it super easy to pop by Mexico for a weekend trip.

Disney Magic is Disney Cruise Line’s first and oldest cruise ship, at age 25!

We had nothing to compare to, but we did expect a 25 year old ship to look and feel more dated. We thought they’ve done a great job maintaining the ship and it actually give off classic Disney vibes despite the old age.

The rooms and guest areas were kept tidy and clean most times. Couldn’t fault the Disney hospitality.

When people asked what we thought of taking a Disney cruise, here are a few of my honest opinions:

• You pay a premium compared to other cruise line, but they’ve extremely family friendly—almost 24 hour kids clubs of all ages and a ton of kids entertainment to keep them occupied (whether they like Disney or not)
• The adult-only areas (Palo restaurant, adults-only pool and bar area, and night life lounges) were enjoyable and you didn’t feel like you’re stuck on a boat filled with families and kids
• If you’re an adult or couple without kids and enjoy Disney, you’ll still have a really fun time. But if you’re not a Disney fan at any level, pick another cruise line.
• Getting through immigration and customs when leaving and returning to the US was so faster, calmer and easier via a cruise line!

A few thing I enjoyed from the spontaneous cruise trip:

• Nightly live Broadway-style musical performances were good, especially the Disney Dreams—An Enchanted Classic, where it included a rendition of old and new Disney songs
• Cognac tasting at the Cove Cafe, a quiet and small adults-only activity.
• Watching the new release Captain America: Brave New World in Walt Disney Theatre on the cruise.
• The weather was a bit cold and windy when we departed Galveston Port, but thankfully on our last sea day the weather warmed up and we got to enjoy the outdoor adult pool, bar and hot tub.
• Joined a Disney day trip to visit two famous sights in the Yucatan— Chichen Itza and Cenote Ik Kil.
• A Cenote is a naturally occuring sinkholes that’s turned into a swimming hole. Cenote Ik Kil is one of the biggest and most well know ones. Despite how commercialised it was, it was still a really fun side trip. The water was clear and cool to swim in, cutting through the humidity of Mexico.
• Chichen Itza is one of the new 7 Wonders of the World, a UNESCO World Heritage site. We spent a couple of hours exploring the site and learning about the ruins that was once the largest Maya cities thousands of years ago. As expected, this place was packed with tourists and local vendors trying to sell you Mayan souvenirs. If you’re short on time, doing a tour is the most efficient way to get there and learn about this historical place.

I’ll share more about our first Disney Cruise Line experience in a future post.

Less travel more travel planning

Unless you’re happy to go with a cookie cutter approach to travel by using a travel agent to turn your travel ideas into reality—that is booking your flights, accommodations, putting you on a bus tours etc—The less glamourous part of travel is planning the travels.

Depending on your personality, travel planning can be fun or the worse thing ever.

Travel planning is really a logistical, problem solving and organisation exercise. Putting the pieces of a puzzle together to create a personalised trip to do, see, eat and experience what matters to you.

For me travel planning is part of the the fun of travelling. It’s solving puzzles like:

• Which airport is best to fly into.
• What’s the most logical way to organise the itinerary to see what we want.
• Where should we stay based on public transport availability and what we plan to do.
• etc.

It’s definitely time consuming.

But the travel planning and research process also gives me a richer experience of the places I’ll be visiting. I start to learn about the history and culture of a place. The joy of “Travelling” has already started before I even set foot there.

Since we stayed put in Houston for much of February, I spent a big chuck of time planning our upcoming trips in March and April:

• Visiting Washington DC to see cherry blossoms by the Tidal Basin, check out some museums and explore Georgetown.
• Attending a wedding in Pennsylvania with some friends, and taking advantage of that trip to drop by New York city for a couple of days.
• A road trip with friends through the the southern states of Kentucky and Tennessee to hit the Bourbon trail, Mammoth Caves National Park and Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

I started to think more about the role of AI when I time researching and planning these trips.

I tried using AI to help with itinerary creation and recommendations and got some mixed results. My initial thoughts is that it generated a good starting point and structure but it wasn’t super reliable or complete. I think AI has a role to play in helping us create more personalised and unqiue travel experiences in the future, so it’s exciting to see where it goes.

I’ll share my thoughts on AI and the future of personalised travel in a future post.

Making Travel Planning Easier (Free Template in Notion)

A goal without a plan is a dream.

So the first step to start travelling and exploring more is to get organised and intentional about making a plan and locking in travel dates ahead of time so the trips actually happens.

But I get it. There’s a lot to juggling when it comes to travel planning—itinerary, accommodation, flight options, things to do, recommended food and drink places etc.

I wouldn’t recommend keeping track of all that in your head. I’m a big Notion fan and I use that to plan and track all our trips. I also use it for other things like meal planning, tracking my tasks and projects, and keeping track of my camera gear etc.

Notion is free to use, hyper customisable and saves you time by giving you the ability to templatise things you do often.

So you’re not reinventing the wheel each time you want to plan a new trip in Notion.

If you want to make travel planning easier, start with downloading my free Travel Hub Template System in Notion that’s been downloaded more than 824+ times below:

Final Thoughts

It was nice to stay local for a change in February.

Being able to visit another country without using an airport (stress of traffic, crowds at security check points and lining up to board or deplane) was one of the best things about taking a cruise. The whole process was much more relaxing.

As much as we enjoyed parts of the cruise, time will tell if we decide to join another one.

Right now we’re in no rush.

Until next time, happy travelling!

Janice.

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