The Galleria Shopping Mall, Houston

...do and places to visit. The Galleria Mall is the official 7th largest Mall in America. Seeing this and knowing just how much myself and my fiancé like shopping, I booked our hotel just a few blocks down the road from the mall, with every intent of visiting.

Located in the "up-town" part of Houston, named "The Galleria District" this mall stands proud covering nearly 3 million square feet of space (this includes ...
...located on the land)

The mall itself is laid out over 3 floors with the bottom floor having an ice rink in the centre and home to the food court. There were many places to eat here including McDonalds and various other fast food places, as well as small cafes and larger restaurants. Oh and it wouldn't be complete without a Starbucks.

The remaining 2 floors were packed with shops and lead to the bigger department stores ... more

Before booking my recent trip to Houston, Texas with my other half, we looked into what to expect when we were there, activities to do and places to visit. The Galleria Mall is the official 7th largest Mall in America. Seeing this and knowing just how much myself and my fiancé like shopping, I booked our hotel just a few blocks down the road from the mall, with every intent of visiting.

Located in the "up-town" part of Houston, named "The Galleria District" this mall stands proud covering nearly 3 million square feet of space (this includes the 2 tower blocks and all of the office blocks located on the land)

The mall itself is laid out over 3 floors with the bottom floor having an ice rink in the centre and home to the food court. There were many places to eat here including McDonalds and various other fast food places, as well as small cafes and larger restaurants. Oh and it wouldn't be complete without a Starbucks.

The remaining 2 floors were packed with shops and lead to the bigger department stores located at either end of the mall (Dillards, Macy's and Nordstrom)

It's a monster of a mall to say the least having over 345 shops, but to be honest; it didn't feel that big really...although my local shopping centre is a third of the size.

We arrived at the mall and quickly located one of the many maps dotted around, to work out which entrance we came in and to see what was on offer and plan our attack. The maps were bright and easy to spot, and spaced evenly over the 3 floors, so which ever part you were in you could work out where you are.

The actual mall is spotless, much like most of the Up-town area in Houston, the floors are marble and sparkling, all glass is perfectly cleaned and not a spot of litter in site. Even though I didn't notice that many bins around it was extremely clean.

Now the main problem with this mall that may not be a negative for everyone is that it's a "high end" mall. Basically it's packed with designer shops. I admit ignorance here not thinking to check before hand, but after seeing it had 345 stores, I assumed there would be a few at least we would enjoy strolling round. I think in total we visited 4 shops with serious intent on looking for something to buy, which were: hot topic (a clothing and music type alternative store) Lids (a hat store) GameStop (surprisingly enough, a games store) and Abercrombie and Fitch.

Although we had a pleasant enough day strolling around and had a nice lunch etc, I couldn't help but be disappointed by the lack of shops for people in my situation, my situation being fashion impaired and way too cheap to spend over £50 on any item of clothing.

To give you an idea, the main shops in the mall were: Burberry, Chanel, Jimmy Choo, Dior, Fendi, Gucci, Armani, Luis Vuitton, Tiffany, Versace, Ralph Lauren and Valentino. Now I'm not even sure if I spelt half of this right, so that pretty much sums up my relationship with designer clothes. As I said, I can't comment that it is a negative for everyone as obviously if you want to shop in designer clothes then this is Mecca!

Everyone we encountered, be it shop staff or fellow shoppers were very pleasant, although I did feel a little under dressed from time to time (apparently shopping in a designer mall requires designer attire!) I even left my phone at Starbucks and it was handed in to the mall security that in turn made a call to my mum from their landline using the number from my phone, who called my fiancé to call the security office. I called them and they advised me where my phone was and were happy and cheerful to get it back to me. I was very impressed as this all happened over the space of about 15 minutes.

There is definitely a day or two worth of shopping to be done here, with many of the shops, mainly the larger department stores, needing a good hour to get around in all the different sections. It was just a shame that it wasn't really what we were expecting.

Thanks for reading :)  

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