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:

The Corniche - biking, running, and playing

One of the most wonderful things about our new city is the Corniche, a strip of land along the waterfront that's grassy and beautiful, planted with flowers and trees. Most importantly, there is a continuous path along it that goes, uninterrupted by the busy and occasionally lethal Abu Dhabi traffic, for 5+ miles. And they are beautiful miles.



On Friday night, we rented bikes and biked along the whole thing. (On Saturday, we got braver, and ran the same route.)



Taking breaks occasionally to look at the view, which keeps changing. Here is Nick, with a peculiar kind of hat.



The best and the worst thing about the Corniche at night is that EVERYONE is on it. Nights in Abu Dhabi are particularly beautiful, and near sun down, the Corniche begins to feel like a massive party. Kids are weaving around on their bikes. Ladies are walking together and chatting. People are out variously picnicking, stretching, playing soccer, sitting on benches and gazing at the view, running, and searching fervently for ice cream. In places, it feels like mayhem. But it is a very happy and communal mayhem, and it's nice to be a part of it.

Dubai: Near the Top

We bought tickets to "At the Top," the observation deck of the world's tallest building, Burj Khalifa. It was originally named Burj Dubai, but was renamed after the ruler of Abu Dhabi after Abu Dhabi bailed out Dubai in 2010. (Names here are super confusing. Most streets, for example, are named after Sheikh Zayed in one way or another.)






















Here we are "At the Top."

Well, near the top. Here's what we could see below:



And here's what we could see above:

Before heading to the top, we prowled the nearby Dubai Mall, the world's largest mall. The mall went on for miles. There is an ice rink and an aquarium; we gawked at the latter in great awe for quite some time.



Honey is sold much like perfume - in beautiful glass vats, at almost $100 a pound.



There is an impressive array of designer clothes, including baby lines for some of the major brands. For example:



But most of the miles are full of cake. One of us spent a lot of time gazing at the cakes. There were layer cakes, and cupcakes of all kinds.

 A branch of Magnolia Bakery (though *this* Magnolia will screen print your cake with Disney princesses, which we're pretty sure is a no-go at its big sister in New York).



And the loveliest and most wonderful bookstore in the world. Well, in the UAE. Here Margaret is, in delight. For what did she find? The complete work of Dickens in three different editions per novel, and a full stack of secondary Literary Criticism. Not bad.