Houston City Night Tours
We offer over one dozen Houston City Night tours. Some of these tours are available year-round by request, while others are offered in December and early January for the holidays. Each of these tours is between 3 and 3.5 hours, with the exception of Houston City Night Tour F under the Holiday Lights. These tours may begin at different times due to sunset and the theme of the tour. For example, most of our haunted tours begin shortly before sunset. All city night tours end no later than 11:30 PM. Please look below at the different categories. Most of these tours are privately arranged so the start times can be flexible.
2 Haunted or Ghost Tours
Both of these Houston city night tours are haunted or ghost tours. These are not advertised as nor do they claim to be scary tours. We are not going to commercial haunted houses. Ghosts are trying to communicate with someone about unresolved issues, not scare people on this side of life. No guarantee exists that you are going to see a ghost or apparition.
We offer the most comprehensive tours of abandoned cemeteries, haunted bars and restaurants, sites of famous murders and suicides, and assorted other buildings that spirits are said to possess. Participants regularly find orbs in their photos. Bring a camera. Participants have heard things, felt their temperature rise, walked into hot spots, experienced something brush up against their skin hair, and smelled different inexplicable odors.
One needs to bring a working flashlight with batteries, wear slacks, comfortable closed toe flat shoes that can get dirty, and insect repellent if rain has fallen within 48 hours of the tour. We will be walking in abandoned cemeteries on uneven ground with weeds in the darkness of the night.
A parent needs to accompany anyone under 21 years old to enter a bar.
Haunted Tour A – This tour starts close to River Oaks and includes multiple sites of famous murders and a suicide, 2 abandoned cemeteries (1 black with civil rights leader Jack Yates and 1 white with Houston co-founder John Kirby Allen), the former John Henry Kirby mansion, the Julia B. Ideson Library, the Bob Casey Federal Courthouse Building, the hanging oak tree, and 1 haunted bar. It normally has 4 stops.
Haunted Tour B – This tour starts in Sawyer Heights and includes 2 abandoned African American cemeteries, 3 haunted bars and restaurants (including the Spaghetti Warehouse), the former Jefferson Davis Hospital (now the Elder Street Artist Lofts and considered by many people as the most haunted site in Houston) and abandoned crematorium, the Alley Theatre, Treebeards, and more. It normally has 6 or 7 stops.
This is a 3.0 to 3.5-hour tour. The time varies, in part, based on whether one chooses to skip going into any of the bars. The tour usually begins at:
- January (During Daylight Savings Time) – 6:00 PM
- February – 6:30 PM
- March – 7:00 PM
- April – 7:30 PM
- May – 8:00 PM
- June and July – 8:30 PM
- August – 8:00 PM
- September – 7:30 PM
- October – 7:00 PM
- November and December (During Daylight Savings Time) – 6:00 PM
1 City Night Tour
This is an ideal tour for business people who are busy with a convention during the day and only have the evening for a tour and for those who have a layover for a few hours.
This tour includes driving through downtown, and seeing City Hall, the Theater District including the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, the Wortham Center, the Alley Theatre, Jones Hall, former banking district, downtown stadiums, Discovery Green Park, Sam Houston Park, historic houses of worship, homes and cemeteries, famous buildings, Freedmen’s Town, River Oaks, the Rice Village, Rice University, the Mecom Fountains, the Museum District, Hermann Park, the Texas Medical Center, Astrodome, Reliant Stadium, the Williams Tower, the Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park, the Galleria area, Memorial Park, Beer Can House, Box Springs House, Gargoyle House/Tempietto Zeni, an art car studio and Sculpturworx. It typically has 2 or 3 stops.
This is a 3.0-hour tour. This tour usually is from either:
- 6:00 to 9:00 PM
- 6:30 to 9:30 PM, or
- 7:00 to 10:00 PM
5 Houston Night Life Tours
Tour A – Entertainment, Music, and Recreation
You have many choices to make here. What kind of bars do you like? What kind of music do you like? What kind of entertainment do you like? Turnover of clubs may result in the closing and or renaming of many venues and the substitution of one bar for another.
- This tour can include going to areas of concentrations of bars such as on lower and upper Westheimer Road, Richmond Avenue, Washington Avenue, on downtown streets such as Franklin Street, Main Street, Travis Street, Congress Street, and Texas Avenue, and sports bars in the Rice Village.
- It can also include several live music options such as the upscale Sambuca Jazz Cafe, The Horn for contemporary jazz, rhythm and blues, and soul, Fitzgerald’s for rock and roll, the House of Blues for well – blues music, Goode’s Armadillo Palace for country and western, and or The Last Concert Cafe with its outdoor stage for bands. Other clubs can be included or substituted as one can make requests in the immediate area. Several of these places will only have live music on Friday and Saturday nights.
- This tour can also take you to recreation areas such as the Aquarium with its amusement center, Bayou Place, the Houston Pavilions with Pete’s Dueling Pianos, and the Galleria with its ice skating rink that is open until 9 PM. Discovery Green is sometimes included when it has movies, performers, or ice-skating in November, December, and January. Hermann Park can be included when it has functions at Miller Outdoor Theater on Fridays and Saturdays from March into November.
Tour B – Gentlemen’s Clubs
This tour is aimed for men who want to visit topless and strip clubs. Houston is known as having the most topless bars per capita of any city in the US. This tour can include from 1 to 7 clubs depending on how satisfied you are. It may include, but is not limited to, The Men’s Club of Houston, the Diamond Club Cabaret, Treasures, Centerfolds, Riviera Cabaret, Dreams Gentlemen’s Club, the Penthouse Club, and the Colorado Bar & Grill.
Tour C – Ladies’ Club(s)
This tour is aimed at women who want to visit topless and strip clubs. This could be 1 to 2 clubs. It will take you to La Bare Ladies Club, the only ladies club in Houston at the time of this posting in December 2010. This tour is available on Wednesdays through Sundays. This can also include the swingers bar TempTaTion, which has a $25 membership fee per person and is BYOB.
Tour D – Gay Clubs
Visit 1 to 7 bars and dance clubs. These can include Decades, the Guava Lamp, JR’s Bar & Grill, Meteor, the Montrose Mining Company, South Beach, TC’s, The Ripcord, and Tony’s Corner Pocket.
Tour E – Lesbian Clubs
Visit 1 to 4 bars and dance clubs. These include Chances that has four different bars under one roof. Club Eve, Throb at the Azteca’s VIP Lounge on Fridays, and South Beach.
These tours are 3.0 to 3.5 hours. These normally are from:
- 7:00 to 10:30 PM,
- 7:30 to 11:00 PM, or
- 8::00 to 11:30 PM.
8 Holiday Lights Tours
These City Night tours are held exclusively in late November and December.
Tours A through G are generally 3.0 hours long. They begin at 6:30 PM and end at 9:30 PM.
Tour H is between 6.5 and 7.0 hours long. It begins at 4:00 PM and ends between 10:30 and 11:00 PM.
Holiday Lights Tour A – This tour starts and ends at the Cleburne Cafeteria on Bissonnet Street and Edloe Street. This covers the near west side of Houston. It includes The Gerald Hines Water Wall Park, the Galleria, Tanglewood, Highland Village, River Oaks, and River Oaks Shopping Center. It has two stops: one at the Water Wall and one to go inside the Galleria and see the massive Christmas tree on the ice skating rink floor.
Holiday Lights Tour B – This tour begins at the McDonald’s on Ella Boulevard and Wilde Rock Way, one block north of I-610. This covers north and northwest Houston. It includes Candlelight Plaza, Acres Homes, Prestonwood Forest, and US 290. It has one stop at a Starbucks for a bathroom and refreshment break.
Holiday Lights Tour C – This tour begins at the Chili’s at Taylor Street and I-10. It covers the northern area of Woodland Heights and the central area of downtown. It has 2 stops: one at City Hall to see the city’s Christmas and City Hall building illuminated and one at Discovery Green Park to go to the Lake House to use the bathrooms and for refreshments, see the ice skating rink, skaters, Gateway Fountain, Kinder Lake, vendors, Jean Dubuffet’s Monument Au Fantome, large balls with children’s faces hanging from trees, Synchronicity of Color art boxes, Doug Hollis’s Listening Vessels and Mist Tree, and other exhibits.
Holiday Lights Tour D – This tour begins at the Chili’s at Taylor Street and I-10. It covers the northeast side area of Kingwood.
Holiday Lights Tour E – This tour begins at the McDonald’s at I-610 and Fannin Street. It covers the greater south area of Houston and inner city. It includes Green Tee in Pearland, Glenbrook Valley, Scott Terrace and La Salette Terrace, Southland Terrace and Riverside Terrace. It has one stop for a bathroom and refreshment break.
Holiday Lights Tour F – This tour begins between the IHOP and McDonald’s located at I-610 and Beechnut. It covers the greater southwest area of Houston. It includes Meyerland, Sugar Land, and Greatwood. It has one stop at a Starbucks for a bathroom and refreshment break.
Holiday Lights Tour G – This tour begins at the HCC campus located at 5601 West Loop South, between Bissonnet Street and Westpark Drive. It goes to the far southwest. It includes New Territory, Shadow Groves Estates, and Pecan Grove Plantation. It has one stop for a bathroom and refreshment break.
Holiday Lights Tour H – This is transport to Santa’s Wonderland A Texas Christmas Experience in College Station, Texas. The drive is about 1.5 hours each way plus a bathroom stop. We spend approximately 3 hours at the site where we drive through “millions of dazzling Christmas lights seen on a winding path stretching over a mile long” according to the Santa’s Wonderland website. See a variety of spectacular light exhibits. We also stop at Santa’s Town where one can use bathrooms, buy souvenirs, eat dinner, watch a free Christmas-themed movie, pet animals, ride a pony, have photos taken with Santa, take photos against a backdrop of a illuminated US flag, listen to music, sit around the multiple campfires, have smores, walk, and more. These tours begin in the latter half of November and end in December. The cost includes the driving tour during the off-peak days that are Sunday through most Thursdays and Santa’s Town. The driving is almost 200 miles.