Galveston

Galveston needs 1 day: riding the roller coasters at Galveston Island Historic Pleasure Pier, built over the water on the site of a 1943 amusement pier, and touring The Strand historic district, with its 19th-century Victorian cast-iron buildings, the same afternoon. March-May and October-November avoid the humid summer heat and hurricane peak. It's inexpensive for a Texas coastal city. It was Texas's most important port until the 1900 hurricane devastated it -the deadliest natural disaster in US history, with at least 6,000 victims-, and its rebuilding included raising the entire city several meters using sand dredged from the Gulf.