Food
Southside Barbacoa
On weekends folks line up out the door for barbacoa by the pound, but come in for breakfast or lunch and you can sit down to your own pile of it. Manuel Aguilar steams beef cheeks for 12 hours with no seasoning at all, and it doesn’t need any. Pile it on a tortilla with onion, cilantro and avocado. He and Maria have been married 46 years, and she runs the dining room with a smile. Order the carne guisada taco too, and the twin special, named for their granddaughters.
Snoopy's Pier
For more than 45 years, Texas families have made a fried seafood basket at Snoopy’s Pier part of their trip to the coast. It started when a local fisherman turned his bait stand into a burger joint, then added deep fryers. The recipes haven’t changed, the shrimp are still peeled by hand, and the fish photos on the wall look the same as I remember. Get the combo, where the fish, oysters and shrimp each wear their own batter, and eat it on the water. Leave room for ice cream next door.
Culture
Texas State Aquarium
The Texas State Aquarium is the largest in the state, home to more than 300 species and 4,000 animals since opening in 1990. Watch sandbar sharks glide through a 400,000-gallon tank, pet a stingray and meet an ocelot, one of the rarest cats in South Texas. The dolphin show is the star, but don’t miss the bigger mission next door: one of the country’s largest coastal wildlife rescue programs, nursing sea turtles, manatees and birds back to health. Your ticket helps keep them going.
Outdoors
Splendid Aviation
Want a whole new view of the coast? Splendid Aviation trains new pilots, and it all starts with a discovery flight. Climb into a small plane with an instructor and soar over downtown, the Harbor Bridge and the USS Lexington, then out toward Port Aransas. Before long they’ll hand you the controls so you can bank left and right yourself. Fair warning: you might get hooked. They say you can earn a pilot’s license in as little as six months.
Mustang Island State Park
Looking for the beach without the crowds? Just past North Padre Island, Mustang Island State Park covers more than 5,000 acres of barrier island, with five miles of beachfront so everybody can spread out. Most of the park sits on the bay side, where some of the best fishing in Texas waits. Bonus: you don’t need a fishing license inside a state park. I didn’t catch a thing, so I went swimming instead. That’s what day tripping is all about.
