The area around Austin is nice. Hilly area.
Houston has some nice neighborhoods, with interesting architecture/landscaping. Rice campus is fairly nice. They've also had some of the best groceries I've been to. Weather is of course a disaster though most of the year. You can kinda sorta get used to it.
I've never been to West Texas past San Antonio. A coworker I was chatting one time lived there at one point though. She called it Hell Paso.
But Bakersfield, CA was uglier than any place I've seen in Texas. The central valley of CA (drive from I-5 from LA to SF) is is also surprisingly like the drive from Houston to Austin. The only difference is for large parts of of the trip is that you can see mountains off in the distance.