We're in Houston for the NCAA Tourney and got an advance look at the city's new downtown centerpiece, Discovery Green.

The park, which opens April 13, is across the street from the Convention Center and the Hilton - Americas. Although it is still lined on two sides with surface parking lots, that land is expected to be developed soon.

Designed by Hargreaves Associates, Discovery Green includes a very cool new restaurant, The Grove, along with a second, more casual dining option. There is a modest bandstand with a lovely sloped green lawn facing it. A set of formal gardens in the style of a Mexican piazza, a putting green, dog run, children's playground, interactive fountains, a lake (that in winter converts to an ice rink) are some of the parks other features. But the park's most pleasing feature be the simple, but powerful walkway lined with mature live oaks. Sometimes, simple really is better.

We've been getting around Houston without a car or cab. A bit of web research produced a public bus schedule to get us from the airport to downtown. There's nothing "express" about it, but it cost $1 and and an hour vs. $60 and 35 minutes by cab. The metro rail is nice (although land alongside it is curiously undeveloped and underdeveloped). It runs fairly frequently, and it has added badly needed green in downtown and throughout the corridor. Soon the single north-south rail line will be joined by five more that the city has committed to build.

We hiked to the Menil Collection from the Museum District stop along an unlikely and fairly bleak corridor. But the trip was worth it to see not only the collection but the building, designed by a joint venture of Renzo Piano/Building Workshop, Genoa, Italy and Richard Fitzgerald & Partners, Houston.

We also visited Contemporary Arts Museum Houston to see Design Life Now: National Design Triennial. But what really grabbed my attention was the exhibition of photographs by Dawoud Bey. His Class Pictures collection, portraits of teens, is mesmerizing.

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