Iftar

Iftar is the break-fast meal eaten once the sun goes down during Ramadan.  It is most common to break fast at home, but it's also popular to have iftar at tents which hotels set up.  We have been eyeing the gigantic tent that Emirates Palace since it was put up, and this week Nick had a chance to file a report from the inside.

It seems the experts will load up a plate before the call to prayer in order to avoid the rush.  There is more than enough food to feed the fasters and non-fasters alike.  Most people who fast during Ramadan have their own strategy for breaking fast, but it always involves one or three dates (never two!) and some liquid.  Unlike most menus in Abu Dhabi the food was primarily traditional Emirati dishes, with a few Egyptian ones thrown in.

But more impressive than the food was the venue -- all of this happened in a tent!

Emirates National Auto Museum

Yes, that is a really big truck!  

On our way back from Liwa, we stopped at the Emirates National Auto Museum, a collection of cars owned by Sheikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan, known as the rainbow sheikh.  He deserves the name: among the many colorful cars in his collection are Mercedes in every color of the rainbow -- the leather seats, the steering wheel, and even the dashboard match the exterior of the car.

There was a interesting mix of sports cars, 1980s saloons, antique cars, and even some not-cars.  Here is a 19th century Mercedes bicycle (with a semi in the background):

A Star Wars scene pained on the side of a van:

And a reminder of home that we weren't dying to see:

But the highlight was the truck -- the cab and bed of the truck house a fully-loaded apartment, with kitchen, multiple bedrooms and a movie room.

The Sheikh was such a good customer that Dodge made a small version of the truck for his young son.

There were a couple of odd vehicles parked outside the museum: an RV in the shape of a globe, and the largest two-wheel camper in the word (certified by Guinness!).  We didn't stop and linger too long at these, as it was almost 120 degrees outside!

 

Liwa Oasis

After nearly a year of living in the desert, we finally made it to the desert proper!  Abu Dhabi consists of about 85% of the UAE by land mass, only a small portion of which is Abu Dhabi city.  Much of the inland area is known as the Empty Quarter, once the home of the Bedouin, and first mapped out by Wilfred Thesiger on foot in the 1940s, just as oil exploration was beginning.





The Empty Quarter is the largest sand desert in the world, but there are oases.

Oasis is a relative term -- there is a bit more sand than green.  The absence of the usual desert scruff means that the red sand can form incredible dunes.

The dunes are other-wordly -- they reminded us of Luke Skywalker's home planet. Apparently we aren't the first to think so; Star Wars was shot here in May.

In fact, the cast and crew rented out our entire hotel for a month.

It was very hot during the day, but grew more pleasant at sunset.  We scurried up some dunes to get the best view.

 We saw sand spiders....








...little lizards (too fast for our camera) and beetles.

But mostly just enjoyed playing in the beautiful sand formations as the sun set....and lolling in the warm dunes to watch the stars coming out. 

Spring-time in Stockholm

Stockholm is one third water...

....one third park....



...and one third city.



It is also a hundred percent cute. Here is a public bathroom:

 Here is a phone booth:

And here is a bridge.



When we visited friends in Stockholm a few weeks back, when the city was flooded with spring.The whole world smelled like lilacs.





Our friends live on Kungsholmen, an island brimming with young people. We saw them in full force, running around the island, picnicking by the water, and sunbathing. We have never seen so many buff, happy-looking people in one place.

We expected to find a city -- instead, we often felt as if we were in the middle of a wedding, or a sappy rom com. (Imagine living in the grassy church scene at the end of Funny Face for a week! Only Fred and Audrey were missing.) We couldn't go for a walk without seeing baby birds -- we counted five different kinds. Unfortunately, no good documentation for the goslings, signets, and more obscure sorts of baby duck we encountered. A mallard, and our apologies.












We saw willows weeping, fields of lush dandelions and banks of violets.


We played mini-golf....

....went running, and biked, and even kayaked around the islands, all the while shepherded by our lovely hosts. 

Stockholm is perfect for biking, and we biked everywhere, stopping for fika (the Swedish word for coffee + sweet snack), and enjoying the sunshine. Our hosts were charmed by the warm weather, and we were delighted to be able to move around without breaking a sweat.
 

It was so beautiful out, that we had a hard time going inside. We did make it into the national church, where the royal family has marriages and baptisms. A wonderful impromptu song broke out from other visitors. 

And we had to go in to see the Vasa, a ship which set out on her maiden voyage in 1628, and promptly sank. The Baltic Sea is brackish, and the Vasa remained well-preserved underwater until 1961, when a massive international team managed to pull her up, whole. The ship may not be sea-worthy, but we were impressed anyway.

We didn't expect to enjoy Swedish food as much as we did (Mary Wollstonecraft is far out of date, but she was so damning of the fare that her censure stuck). The tradition of sandwiches for breakfast made us extremely happy, as did other sandwiches: here, skagen, shrimp mixed with caviar and dill on toast, made by our hosts. 

On the sweeter end of the spectrum, we tried chocolate balls and princess torte, and were not in the least disappointed.

Well, Nick was.

But disappointments couldn't linger long. There was so much else to do, and see, and eat, and smell, and chat about. 

 

 

There were cliffs to climb and views to see, grass to loll in and flowers to gaze upon.

 

 

It was a wonderful week of being outside in a beautiful city with dear friends.