Our empty nest

It has been over a MONTH of living in a hotel. And though the hotel is dignified and such - it has a very grand lobby, and looks kind of like an MC Escher print from the elevator....

....we are so excited to move to our new house, a block away.

Which house, you ask? We are living in one of the blue towers on the right hand side. Doesn't look like a house, does it? It is a bit funny looking, we admit. At least one of our parents thinks that the architecture is absolutely hideous. But it has a Waitrose (yes, the Waitrose that gave us our groceries on trust) and ... a lot of jewelry stores. And we like it.

It is near our favorite camel burger joint....

....and across the street from the Corniche and our windsurfing/paddle board rental spot....

...and best of all, it has room for visitors, which isn't true of our current abode. Here is the guest room. It is the most furnished room in the whole house (the process of said furnishing was an epic cross-city adventure from which we are still recovering).



And here is where your breakfast gets cooked. No windows, but there is a washer-dryer and an ice maker - all the better to make smoothies!

 Based on our current habits, this is what you will get.



And this is our study/yoga room/mini-library. That's Coconut Island behind the two buildings.



And here is the bedroom. We haven't figured out how to cover the extremely creepy window from bathroom to bedroom (not pictured), but there's time....



And this is the future room of ping pong, movies, reading, and lounging of all kinds. Nick is happy because he can see Coconut Island from here. And I am happy because I can see the Emirates Palace helicopter pad. To each his own. We can also see a football field (not the American variety - poor Nick), the real palace (where the Sheikh lives), and Marina Mall.



We can't wait to settle down, play some ping pong, and get some bikes to hang on the wall like trophies. Nick's sister Katie has got us dreaming of indoor hammocks....and Margaret is contemplating electrical DIY projects to spoof the local chandeliers and testify to the glory of the mason jar....but those things may wait a while. In the meantime, come play!

Emirates Palace, Abu Dhabi

Across the way from us is a seven star hotel (for better jokes than we can make about Abu Dhabi's claims to seven stars, check out The World's Only Seven Star Satirical News Source), complete with camel lattes, an ATM that dispenses gold bars, and a massive selection of jewelry and watch stores. There are cases and cases of ancient (several thousand years old) ceramics.  Sitting inside makes us feel as if we're dining in Versailles.

During our first week here, Margaret went for a camel latte, and did a massive amount of work because of her supreme fear of being caught gawking. Seriously. Like a whole grant application in one day. That ten dollar latte was worth every dirham.

We went back together this weekend to celebrate the beginning of Eid. There are a lot of restaurants, many of which are out of our price range, but the cafe is reasonable and almost impossibly tranquil. We both ordered the camel burger, which comes with gold flakes and delicious chick pea fries!

Gold, we've been told in the morning news, is health-neutral. Phew.

  After dinner we went for a wander around the grounds. Margaret found a gold hat for Nick and and enjoyed the view of the massive hallways.

It is impossible to capture the place properly in photos - the way the city skyline opens up as you stand at the top of the steps - the way the obscene number of fountains playing becomes peaceful and elegant, rather than tasteless - the way the great green fields of grass and trees attracts so many birds that there is constant birdsong of all kinds. We were ready to be disgusted at ostentation, but were instead charmed.  You will just have to visit.

My new fav sign

At the Shangri-La Hotel Souq:

Al Ain Zoo

After a nice dinner with friends on Thursday evening, we woke up on Friday without any particular plans.  A trustworthy tourist magazine suggested we visit the Emirates National Auto Museum (say yes to everything!).  Unfortunately, we missed a turn on the way there, and ended up halfway to Al Ain -- so we decided to go the whole way.  Al Ain is the second-largest city in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. It is a popular spot in the summer, because though it is even hotter than Abu Dhabi, it is less humid.  It is also more (naturally) verdant and has many oases.

The Al Ain Zoo is the best in the UAE, and we've been planning to go for ages.  Fortunately for us, the zoo started its winter hours this weekend -- meaning it stayed open during the day -- but sadly, they kept the summer weather. Curiously, they sell neither sunscreen, nor postcards (unless you're interested in high-end dino holograms, which we normally would be -- but at a zoo?).

The zoo has a large collection of animals native to the Arabian peninsula and northern Africa.  Some had some pretty incredible headgear, including the aptly named scimitar oryx.

Believe it or not, flamingos make their home in the UAE for a brief period of time on their way from Russia to Africa.  We saw some more permanent residents:

There were some giraffes living contentedly with some rhinos, with a beautiful mountain in the background.

Margaret saw her first ostrich up close:

And some hippos!

We had trouble finding the exit, so tentatively entered an unlabeled building near the entrance.  Turned out it had an exhibit on local birds.  Some of them looked like they'd been painted by Dr. Seuss.

The sand dunes on the drive home were beautiful. We are excited to take a camping trip once our sand tent arrives with the rest of our worldly possessions (this week - fingers crossed!).

Coconut Island Kayak

Nick has a crush on an island. It is a little, almost uninhabited island that was dredged from the Gulf. (This is a frequent practice here - Bahrain has expanded by 10% via dredging - and an environmental problem, as it's bad for the corals in the Gulf, which have been shrinking drastically in the last few decades). 

Almost uninhabited. There is one mansion there, amid the undeveloped sand.

The island was supposed to be a luxury resort, we learned via "the Google." But the Internets haven't quite kept up to speed on why the luxury resort hasn't happened yet. What we have found are articles from 2008, 2009, and 2010 that gleefully proclaim the island's completion by 2010. We also found claims that the island is "rightfully named so because it has many coconut palms." False. 

And there is no Ritz Carlton Luxury Hotel, and no discernible labor is going on. So the poor man on the island must be very lonely. This is his view:

And this is his rubble-strewn beach. Yes, we kayaked there, despite our fears that a man living alone on an island in Abu Dhabi might be a little xenophobic, and possibly well-armed. We didn't land on his dock, at least. 

If you come to Abu Dhabi, we probably will not take you to Coconut Island. But we will take you where we ate afterwards - the Lebanese Flower, where banana smoothies are to die for, and the falafel sandwich costs a little more than a dollar. 

Our Rome Syllabus

We are getting ready for Christmas in Rome...and are planning our pre-travel reading, watching, and dining seriously. As all good courses begin, we begin ours with a syllabus.  

A Florence syllabus might be a bit ambitious (we have jobs and stuff), but we do want to read 

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture. 

Selected reading:
Non-Fiction
Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ambitious, but one of us definitely should have read it)
Goethe's Italian Journey (1786-1788). Massively popular account that popularized travel writing along with it.
Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad (1869). Since we want to know what Mark Twain has to say about everything, we'd better look into what he thinks about Italy. And travel. And everything.
Henry James' Italian Hours (1909). It's dubious, but it is said that Henry James actually warms up a bit in his travel descriptions. We'll believe it when we read it. 
DH Lawrence's Etruscan Places (1932). Lawrence visits Etruscan tombs and gets generally very excited.

Fiction

Edith Wharton's "Roman Fever" 

EM Forster's A Room with a View
Robert Graves' I Claudius.
         And fun to take along for the ride: A Literary Companion to Rome, by John Verriano.

Selected viewing
Obviously, Roman Holiday over and over and over. And Three Coins in the Fountain.
Felini's La Dolce Vita 
and

Rossellini's Open City

Listening

The History of Rome podcast by Mike Duncan (aired between 2007 and 2012, won several awards)

Eating/cooking

Marcella Hazan and Elizabeth David non-stop! (As soon as we have a functional kitchen.)

Signs Abu Dhabi

Different signs tickle us as we walk around town. The typos are frequent, but sometimes brilliant. Nick liked this one:

And I thoroughly enjoy the toilets that God seems to have created male and female.

There are others, of course. Here are some:
*Ladies Saloon 
*Life Line Hospital
            ....A bit dramatic, no? but even better....wait for it....
*Day Care Surgery 
                                ....and....a rather marvelous misreading of Texas meat culture....
*Texas Chicken 

And the sign to end all signs is the list of demands of those walking on the lovely waterfront, complete with pictures. Here it is:

Who are we to argue? The signs, they are so helpful. This one, most of all: