Kuwait 29 Jan - 30 Jan 2010

So this past weekend, we took off across the borders with our good friends D and JRay from Bahrain to Kuwait. I don't recommend this to everyone, as you can't just drive to Saudi any old time you want unless you have a Saudi visa, which we all do. If you are in the Middle East and can't drive, just fly! :)

After about 5 hours, 1 spent on the Saudi/Kuwait border waiting for our visa, we were finally in Kuwait. Not before stopping to take pictures of camels of course!

Watch out for camels!

Kuwait was really interesting. I'm not sure what I expected, but definitely not high rise buildings, a legit highway system and green trees everywhere (that weren't palm trees!), not to mention Kuwaiti flags on every street, and not just one, more like 10. We checked into our hotel, Le Meridien Kuwait Towers, complete with a nice lit up green screen behind our bed - wow.

Then headed out to grab lunch. We were directed towards Avenues Mall (everything is in malls there, it's crazy!), after a few wrong turns, we found it, next to the IKEA and full of every Western store and restaurant you could imagine: PF Changs, Pinkberry, Dean & Deluca, and in case you missed the Starbucks over here, there's about 5 other ones throughout the mall - ridiculous and I won't even get into the shopping! We decided to eat at Uno's, famous for their Chicago deep-dish pizza (I had chicken, thanks gluten-free diet) and then headed out to their famous Friday Market. I can't even begin to explain everything they had here! It was full of traditional trinkets and souvenirs, and curtains, fabrics, carpets, clothing, purses, shoes, tools, furniture, I could go on, but it was amazing to see. You could literally spend the whole day there and then have to go back because you probably missed something. We didn't find too many hidden gems but we got a door knocker, it will probably never go on a door but is a nice addition to our cultural treasures. By this time, it was actually cold, the temperature said 68, but it was definitely colder than that with the wind. So we went back to the hotel so J and I could change and grab warmer clothing and then headed out to eat dinner at Burj al Hamam (Pigeon Tower), it was a Lebanese restaurant and delicious! After dinner, we headed to another mall and sat at an outdoor cafe, drinking tea and smoking sheesha.

The next morning, we had a good breakfast in the hotel and then headed out. We set out to find this museum called Al-Qurain Martyr Museum. It turned out to be a house where a large shootout had occurred almost 20 years ago (24 February 1991) during the Gulf War. It was basically a bombed out building, which they have preserved, yet not restored, so what you see is most likely waht was there 20 years ago. Out front you can see a tanker and the cars which were there during the occurrence. Once we walked in the house, I was overcome with so many emotions. It was one of the only historical places I've been where I could actually imagine, picture and hear what must have gone on that tragic day. The gunshots, the bombs, the yelling, the screams - they were all there for me. I was close to tears walking through each room, seeing each gunshot in the wall, the bricks which were shattered.

What made it even worse was knowing just a few hundred miles east, this stuff is going on, on a daily basis. After walking through the house with a guide who was very passionate about it and must have had strong ties to it, we were taking to the "museum" part, which showed each man who died that day and some information about him. There were letters which were written from Iraq, detailing the horrible things they expected to do to Kuwait and their people, and several pictures showing the damage the war had caused. In any case, it was incredibly moving and sombering. The Kuwaiti people went through so much pain and loss and seem to be very thankful to the US for coming in when they did (no matter what our motives were) and they have managed to rebuild their country to the beauty it is today.

After that, we needed something a little less depressing, we headed down to the Corniche (road by the ocean) to take some pictures and then to the Kuwait Towers.

We took the elevator up to the top and checked out the view of the city which was pretty cool.

After that, we decided to head back to Bahrain, since it was getting pretty late and we had a long drive ahead of us and some of them had to work (*cough* not me *cough*). The drive back for some reason took much longer, due to the fact it was dark and we missed a turn and luckily we have a GPS but not one that knows about construction turns, but we were fine. We stopped in Saudi to eat shawarmas and then headed home.

All in all, it was a very interesting and eye-opening trip and we're already trying to figure out when we can get back there!