If your family is interested in China's history and culture, visit the Forbidden Gardens museum. Ira Poon, a Hong Kong native, decided to share China's ancient history with his adopted country by replicating some of its most important treasures in an outdoors museum. He chose to place that museum in Katy, a suburb a few miles west of Houston.

Forbidden Gardens contains scaled down replicas of the Forbidden City, the extensive grounds of the former Imperial family home and the 6,000 piece army found in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang-di. You will also find replicas of the city of Suzhou, known as the Venice of China, and Chinese weapons, armor, and vehicles.

The admission price is ten dollars per adult but five dollars for adults over the age of 62. Children are three dollars but on the day we visited, a child's ticket was free with each adult ticket bought. My website focuses on Texas places that are free or extremely inexpensive, so for me, the ticket price was a bit steep. To get the most out of this experience, call ahead to find out that day's tour times. Our tour guide was very knowledgeable about China's ancient history and spoke in detail about the function of the actual places in ancient times and their state today. We left the tour wanting to know even more about China and trying to figure out a way to see the places represented in the museum for ourselves.

This experience is more appropriate for school age children. My toddler son quickly became restless during the tour and of course was not interested in China's ancient history. He did enjoy looking at the numerous statues though. For more information visit the Forbidden Gardens website at http://www.forbidden-gardens.com.

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