Travel: Galveston is a city of history, culture... and plenty of shrimp

The Pleasure Pier amusement park on Galveston Island.

You’ve probably heard of the Texan coastal resort city of Galveston thanks to Glen Campbell.

Tucked behind the up-tempo country song’s sound are mournful lyrics about a soldier missing sea waves crashing onto the Gulf Coast island beach, and by the time the strings fade out, you somehow end up missing a place you’ve never even been.

Give yourself a chance to miss Galveston properly.

Last week I visited Houston, the largest city in Texas, and after those exciting metropolitan adventures a three-day trip to the historic seaside area is a welcome contrast.

A short hop up the I45 across the Galveston Causeway brings us to the historic seaside front which arrives like an ocean breeze.

The Grand Galvez Resort and Spa historic beachfront resort hotel.

While Houston is centred around skyscrapers whose origins stretch back weeks in some cases, Galveston’s buildings, in some cases, stretch back to the 19th century, before it became one of the biggest ports of America’s enormous maritime hey-day.

The buildings here lean towards Victorian or wooden-slatted Colonial styles and come splashed in a variety of colours, even pastel blue or pink.

You might even think the homes, in a town located in what’s considered the most fierce and macho state in the US, are extremely adorable.

Perhaps there are places in Texas which embody the unofficial state motto of Don’t Tread On Me but Galveston embodies, if anything, the real state motto which is, simply, Friendship.

The Southern charm is so effusive that, when we check into the Grand Galvez, the manager tries to loan us his personal car, for instance.

The Grand Galvez is located on the seafront. A big pink building fronted by palm trees, it looks like the location for a particularly charming Wes Anderson movie and dates to the late 19th century.

This makes it truly ancient in American terms and ghost stories abound, although the only spirits we saw were the ones being downed in the cool Founders Bar.

The Grand Galvez is known as the Queen of the Gulf and afternoon sees southern belles young and old enjoying High Tea of all things in the Monarch Restaurant.

There’s more friendliness at the handsome restaurant Sugar and Rye where our server, a teenage high school quarterback and son of the owner, drawls: “Y’all should try the grits.”

Y’all missed out: the shrimp and grits were outstanding. The fruits of the Gulf of Mexico are served in all their forms in Galveston, but if you simp for shrimp then this city is nirvana.

Historic Downtown Galveston’s main shopping street is called The Strand, where a visit to the ornate iron-fronted shops, boutiques and eateries (and more shrimp) is a walkable day in itself, although there are horse drawn carriages if you want to indulge your inner Southern belle.

For those looking for culture, The Bryan Museum, located in a former orphanage, bristles with history about Texas and Galveston: dads will be transfixed by Civil War (the American one) and old West-era saddles and revolvers, although this is a thoughtful and fascinating exploration of history rather than a rootin’, tootin’, cowboy shootin’ kind of experience.

There’s more history if a floating boat floats your boat, in the form of the 19th century tall ship, Elissa, built in Aberdeen in 1877. The old lady isn’t the only immigrant Scot to have found success in this part of the world, of course – Houston is named after a man whose roots stretch back here, after all.

The restaurant, Gaidos, is a beachfront institution which leaves you in no doubt what to expect: a huge model crab looms over its front doors.

A painfully friendly waiter urges us to take the option to top our titanic plates of fresh seafood with a scattering of jumbo lump crab and, in the name of travel journalism, we agree, then somehow find the room for a wedge of the restaurant’s award-winning pecan pie, drizzled in nutty, molasses-sweet Cowboy Bourbon sauce.

As night falls, so do our blood sugar levels. Resisting a diabetic coma we walk to Galveston Pleasure Pier, built in the 1940s and with southern charm seeping from the planks of timber on which it sits. There’s a Ferris wheel where, if you time it right, you’ll be near the apex as the sun sets behind the island, bathing the Gulf in hazy orange and pink rays.

We travel back home – thanks to Singapore Airlines, which is operating a route to Houston from Scotland via Manchester – already missing the hospitality of historic Galveston.

The sound of Glen Campbell pining for it too leaks from my complimentary headphones as the wheels leave the runway.

P.S. With 32 miles of beaches, the island of Galveston is one of the most popular destinations in Texas. It is also where, two years after Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Union troops arrived to free 250,000 enslaved Texans. The anniversary, known as Juneteenth, is now proudly celebrated on the island and across the USA.