Where to stay in Houston: the best areas and hotels

Downtown Houston has woken up. The glass towers of the oil majors now share the streets with a lively theatre district, the Astros' ballpark, the Rockets' arena and Discovery Green, a park of lawns, fountains and food trucks in front of the convention centre. Much of the daytime bustle happens out of the heat in a network of air-conditioned tunnels, and the light rail runs south to the museums and the stadium.

The Marriott Marquis is the showstopper, steps from Discovery Green with a rooftop lazy river in the shape of Texas. The Four Seasons has a spa, an outdoor pool and one of the city's best Latin restaurants. The Sam Houston, first opened in 1924, is the historic boutique choice, and C. Baldwin, named after the 'Mother of Houston', is a stylish hotel in the financial district with a free downtown shuttle.

West of Downtown, Uptown is a second skyline built around the Galleria, the largest mall in Texas, where several hundred shops surround a full-size ice rink. Post Oak Boulevard is the address for flagship stores and expense-account restaurants, and Memorial Park, one of the biggest city parks in the country, is on the doorstep for a morning run.

The Post Oak is the most lavish hotel in the city, with a spa, an outdoor pool and a celebrated steakhouse. Hotel Granduca is its opposite in mood: an Italian-style retreat of 122 suites around a garden pool terrace. The Royal Sonesta is steps from the mall, and the Omni sits in landscaped gardens a short walk from both the Galleria and the park.

South of Downtown, live oaks arch over the streets and the pace drops. The Museum District gathers nearly twenty institutions, among them the Museum of Fine Arts, the Museum of Natural Science and the hushed, wonderful Menil Collection, around Hermann Park and the Houston Zoo. Rice University's handsome campus is next door, and beyond it rise the towers of the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world.

Hotels here serve the hospitals as much as the museums, which keeps standards high. The InterContinental is the smartest, adjacent to the Medical Center. Blossom Hotel has an outdoor pool and a sky bar, the Westin has a pool terrace with its own bar, and the Hilton Houston Plaza offers suites near Rice. NRG Park, home of the Texans and the vast Houston rodeo each March, is a short light-rail ride south.

Follow the I-10 west and you reach the districts where much of Houston actually works: Memorial City, Westchase and the Energy Corridor, home to the big oil and engineering firms. For visitors there is a large mall, the restaurants of CityCentre and easy motorway access, plus room rates that undercut Downtown and the Galleria.

Hotel ZaZa Memorial City brings some theatre to the suburbs, with a spa, an outdoor pool and a free local shuttle. The Embassy Suites in the Energy Corridor suits families with its two-room suites, and the Houston Marriott Westchase is a big, comfortable all-rounder. Katy, further west, adds an outlet mall and a water park.

About 25 miles south-east of Downtown, on the way to Galveston, the Clear Lake area is home to NASA's Johnson Space Center. Space Center Houston, its visitor attraction, lets you walk beneath a Saturn V rocket and peer into historic mission control, and it easily fills a day. The Kemah Boardwalk, with its rides and seafood restaurants on Galveston Bay, takes care of the evening.

Stay out here if NASA is your main reason for coming, or to split a trip between the city and the beach. The Hilton Houston NASA Clear Lake overlooks the lake itself. In Webster, the Holiday Inn Express is three miles from the space centre, and the Hampton Inn and the pet-friendly Comfort Suites both include breakfast.

The Woodlands, about 30 minutes north of Downtown, is a planned community tucked so deep into the pines that you barely see it from the road. It has miles of trails, lakes for kayaking, a canal-side promenade of shops and restaurants, and the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, one of the country's busiest outdoor concert venues.

The Woodlands Resort is the classic stay, a forest retreat that started as a modest inn in the 1970s and now sprawls across golf courses and pools. The Waterway Marriott sits on the canal with a spa and an outdoor pool, and the Embassy Suites at Hughes Landing is beside the lake.

Houston's main international airport is well north of the centre, so for an early flight it pays to sleep nearby. The DoubleTree is a mile from the airport with a free shuttle, the Sonesta has an outdoor pool and a hot tub, and in neighbouring Humble the Sleep Inn runs its shuttle around the clock.