With word of Houston’s blossoming culinary scene, arts community and resilient economy all finding their way into the national press recently, it’s no surprise that one of Houston’s thriving neighborhoods has followed suit.

This month’s National Geographic Traveler fondly narrates a walking tour through the Houston Heights in its City Life section. The New York-based writer describes the turn-of-the-century town within the city as “a world away from the freeways and sprawl of America’s fourth largest metropolis,” and goes on to list a dozen notable landmarks, art institutions and restaurants that we Houstonians are lucky enough to take for granted.

Among them: the meditation resources of the Houston Zen Center, intimate performances at Opera in the Heights, Scott Tycer’s cutting-edge Textile restaurant and more than a half a dozen small art galleries mingling with quirky bites like snow cones from Mam’s House of Ice.

The neighborhood’s antique shops also feature prominently in the piece, which concludes “you can take home a vintage American purse constructed from folded cigarette packs or a department store price tag from the 1940’s — reminders that the past is ever present — even in forward-looking Houston."

Couldn’t have put it better myself.