The Upper Hand Salon: Royal Oaks

Join Alley Theatre, the crown jewel, where actors, designers, composers, and playwrights thrive using arts scenes on stage and produce up to 16 plays yearly, ranging from the best current work to re-invigorated classic plays. The talented cast, crew, and producers challenge themselves with different shows each season. In addition to the educational and outreach efforts each year, they encourage young playwrights, performers, and future patrons to participate and explore programs like Stage to Page, HYPE, and the Young Performers Studio.

The Holocaust Museum Houston begins with a look at life before the Holocaust and the beginning of Nazism. The exhibit then shows its insidious progression from segregation to imprisonment to extermination. Artifacts, film reels, photographs, and text panels tell the story and set the backdrop for personal accounts from local survivors. Among the many items on display is a World War II Holocaust railcar that carried millions of Jews to concentration camps and a Danish rescue boat that saved thousands of Jews from the hands of Nazi Germany. The museum is an ever-evolving, living museum that includes a permanent exhibit and temporary exhibits on loan from other Holocaust Museums around the country. Many who have visited here, survivors, adults, and schoolchildren, have left notes, poems, artwork, and gifts to express their feelings upon seeing the exhibits.

Dive into the wonders of the underwater world at the unique Downtown Aquarium, where you can interact with the ancient legends of El Dorado in the Sunken Temple, sink to the bottom of the neighboring sea, and catch glimpses of offshore rig divers in the Underwater Rig. Tour the marsh and bayous of the Gulf Coast and encounter the alligators, turtles, bullfrogs, and more in the Texas Bayou. Step inside the sunken hull of a 17th-century Spanish Galleon and see the giant octopus, a moray eel, clownfish, and the diversity of species the ocean world has to offer at the Shipwreck. Explore the lush environment of the dangerous tropical life of the red-bellied piranhas and venomous freshwater stingrays in the Rainforest. Step into Discovery Zone and come face-to-face with electric eels, seahorses, and a dazzling array of colorful fish. Interactive monitors let you further explore coral reefs, the arctic seas, and the mysteries of the deep ocean. You may even meet one of our Ambassador Animals up close during the daily Animal Encounters.