Boston 10 June 2010 - 14 June 2010

For an impromptu weekend, we jetted off to Boston for Chris’s 10 year high school reunion. He went to a boarding school about 20 minutes outside of Boston, so we didn’t have much time actually IN the city, but we tried our best.

We flew Gulf Air to London and then American Airlines to Boston. I have nothing decent to say about American Airlines – although I wish I could. My brother has been a pilot for them for almost 20 years so I feel a sort of tie to them. Unfortunately after this trip, I do not. They flew us in a 757 over the Atlantic. For those of you not familiar with plane types – it’s a 3-3 (3 seats on each side) with one aisle. They flew a plane used for domestic flights (or to the Caribbean) OVER THE ATLANTIC. Next time you get on a domestic flight, imagine how much you’d enjoy being in that small space for 7 hours. Luckily, the window seat was empty so we had the row to ourselves.Not to mention, no personal televisions which made for no decent inflight entertainment.

 

 {my view for 6.5 hours}

We arrived in Boston on Thursday night and checked into our hotel, Courtyard Marriott, near the airport. It was perfectly acceptable for what it was, a comfy bed, plenty of space and a flat screen TV. The next morning, we checked out and took the T into the city. Luckily we had a teeny bit of jet lag so we were up early at around 530 and were able to make the most of our day. We started the day off at Dunkin Donuts and had breakfast (why is Dunkin’ Donuts so popular in Boston? That was really funny to me). We were the first people in line for our Boston Duck Tour which was a quick way to see Boston since we didn’t have much time. We had a great guide and I took a bunch of pictures. I was able to see lots of areas of Boston I wouldn’t necessarily have had the chance to see.

After that, we went to Faneuil Hall. It was a cute little part of Boston and I see now where Pat Neff (you Baylor people) was taken from. Don’t tell me that isn’t the spitting image of the building on campus.

We walked around for awhile and got a few souvenirs and I admired that Boston is such a sports town. The weekend we were there was not only Game 4 and 5 of the NBA finals, home games for the Red Sox, but also the World Cup. We had a drink at a place called the Salty Dog and then headed back to the airport to pick up our rental car and Alex.

After picking up Alex, we did some shopping and then headed to the campus. The campus was so out of Dead Poet’s Society – it was really pretty. We registered, put away our stuff and took a tour of the campus, it was really cool to see where Chris spent 3 years. The reunion was a blast, I met some really cool people and laughed a lot.

On Saturday night we couldn't get away without going to Legal's Seafood - it was delicious. Chris feasted on 2.5lb lobster while I had lobster bisque and oysters. It was delish!

But back to traveling…on Sunday we went back into the city and met their friend, Adi, for lunch and we had dim sum – SOOO DELISH! I can’t even tell you what the name of it was, sorry, then we walked down Newbury Street and around Boston Commons.

I really wish we’d had a least another day to see more of Boston because there is so much history there and it is just a really cool city! We sent Alex on a bus to New York and we went on to the airport.

We flew back to London on American Airlines, on a 767 (2-3-2), but once again, they did not fail to disappoint. Not only did we take off almost an hour late (why, oh why is it so hard for a US flight to take off on time) It was almost as if they were just practicing, their video screens didn’t work, not to mention they didn’t have personal TVs [again] in the seats, what are we 1995?, the service was amateur and when we landed, I literally said “JESUS CHRIST!”, worst.landing.ever. I was also stuck in the middle seat of a middle row which was painful. After 3 hours in London, we hopped on a British Airways plane where no one apparently wanted to go to the desert. Gee, I wonder why?

So Chris and I each had our own row and were able to get some proper sleep. The staff was friendly, despite all this talk about striking and the personal TVs were great! ;)

I wish we had done more sightseeing on this trip, but hopefully we’ll get back to Boston sooner than later, and possibly do a combination trip with New York.

xoxo

Dubai, UAE 18 Feb - 20 Feb 2010

This has been a long time coming but I have been waiting for pictures, apparently we go to Dubai quite a bit that I forget my camera now :( So excuse my Blackberry photos

We arrived on Thursday night, and were picked up by Mutaz and our friend, Shaft. Shaft used to live in Austin, but moved to Lebanon to go to med school about 2 or so years ago, so we haven't seen him since then. We went to a place called Shakespeare's which is near the Burj Khalifa [Dubai].

{Burj Khalifa at night}

Before that, we watched the water show in front of the Burj Khalifa - yes, think Vegas Bellagio, but to Arabic music. Haha.

A bunch of people joined us at Shakespeare's and we had dinner, tea and shisha.

On Friday, we got ready, had lunch at Fuddruckers at Jumeriah Beach 

 {JBR - where there are restaurants galore}

and then went to The Dubai Mall - all I wanted to do was a little birthday shopping at Express. I did that, but I also found the best.candy.store.ever. It even had Garrett's Popcorn from Chicago - imagine. I went all the way to Chicago for that popcorn when it was just an hour flight away!

After wandering around there for awhile, we went home to get ready for our night out.

We had dinner at ShoCho - Japanese food, which was absolutely delicious and spent the rest of our night, where else? At Boudoir - always a good time, and this time there was an insanely large group of us so it was really fun. I wish I had better pictures.

Saturday was an unfortunate hangover brunch at Coco's, then ice cream or frozen yogurt at Mall of the Emirates. 

I really do love Dubai - it's nice for a weekend getaway, plus it's great for meeting new people! We got to meet a lot of new people this last time and having so many people to talk to and get to know was really fun!

 {A somewhat better picture of Burj Khalifa during the day}

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!

Salzburg/Vienna, Austria 28 Dec 2009 - 2 Jan 2010

A few months ago, we decided we wanted to spend New Years somewhere else than Texas, seeing as we fly through Europe on the way back to the Middle East, somewhere in Europe was the best fit. We finally narrowed it down between Prague and Austria. I've never been to either so I would have been happy with either one, but we decided we wanted a low-key new year so we went to Austria. I was ecstatic because I love The Sound of Music and Austria is on my "must-see countries" list. We also invited Chris's sister, Amy, to join us. We spent 2.5 days in Salzburg and 1 day in Vienna, before flying to London for 1 day before jetting back off to Bahrain.

28 Dec '09
We left Houston on our way to London complete with 4 bags and 4 carry-ons. We got lucky and got upgraded to Business Class which was a treat! Delta did this for us last year on the flight from hell and it was nice, but more like glorified economy class.

British Airways Business Class was the real deal! Free flowing champagne, seared tuna and flat reclining seatbeds. After actually getting sleep on an airplane, we landed in London safe and soundly.

 

29 Dec '09
Our layover wasn't very long for our flight to Vienna, which was nice. Once we landed in VIE, we put all our excess baggage in left luggage, grabbed a bus to the train station and got our tickets to Salzburg. (Our vacation was purely planes, trains and automobiles.) The train ride was about 3 hours but allowed us to get a small nap in which helped us not fall asleep before dinner.

Salzburg was beautiful, it's such a quaint little town. We stayed at a little bed and breakfast called Hotel Weisse Taube - Chris and his family had stayed there when they went almost 15 years ago. Our room was a decent size for European standards, we had 2 separate rooms and a decent sized bathroom. After freshening up, we headed out to grab some dinner and ended up eating at a restaurant called Saran Essbar where we all had Wiener Schnitzel. It.was.delicious. We walked around for a bit before calling it an early night.

30 Dec '09

After breakfast we headed to the HohenSalzburg Fortress. The view from the top was breahtaking! You can see the entire city from the top.

We took a short tour and then walked to the Museum of Modern Art to take pictures OF the fortress, instead of on TOP of it.

There are 2 parts of Salzburg, Old Town and New Town. We ended up in the Old Town and walked down the famous street Getriedegasse,

past Mozart's childhood home

and then stopped to have lunch consisting of goulash and bratwurst (not together).

We went to the Dom St. Rupert Cathedral and then walked around to a lot of booths that were selling trinkets, food and spiced wine. There was also an ice skating rink and right next to that was a statue of Mozart. Luckily, this was also about a minute walk from our B&B.

We got tickets to see a marionette show of Hansel and Gretel at the Salzburger MarionettenTheater, apparently it's a big thing in Austria and the company is really famous, they came to Bahrain last year and do a bunch of shows all over the world! I'm sure it was really good, but we were so jetlagged we all fell asleep in the middle - oops. How the hell do you drag out the story for 2 hours?

After the cultural experience we headed to eat dinner at a place called Zum Fidelen Effen - (The Faithful Ape). We had to share a table with 3 other people (the European way) and they tried to start a conversation, somehow it came out we lived in the Middle East and one of the guys gave me a hard time about not drinking beer and asked if I was Muslim? No, I'm not, I just don't like beer. "Well, then why aren't you drinking?!" Boo.

31 Dec '09
We headed to the New Town and took a long walk, over the Mozart Bridge, climbed up a hundred stairs, and passed a chapel, among other things. The walk was really nice.

We went to the cemetery where The Sound of Music's ending scene was based on. We also went to the Mirabelle Gardens, where some other scenes were filmed. Did I have the entire Sound of Music soundtrack stuck in my head all day? Yes.

Then we ate some delicious pizza - very Austrian. Did some souvenir shopping and then started to get ready for our dinner reservations at Hotel Elefant. We walked around the square with some gluewein (hot wine) and champagne.

New Years' Eve in Salzburg was fantastic. Our hotel was 2 minutes from the center, alcohol was every 5 feet, there was music and people wandering around. Right before midnight we got our champagne and walked to the bridge with 100 of our closest friends to watch the fireworks (Which had been going off since the day before btw), at midnight there was an amazing display of fireworks! We didn't stay out much later because we had to get back and pack to leave the next morning.

1 Jan '10
We took a train back into Vienna. Once there, we hired a taxi to drive us into town. We saw a lot of sights and ate a lot of food (That's all we seemed to do!) I enjoyed Salzburg better just because it was smaller and more quaint. Vienna is still beautiful but has the bigger city feel.

2 Jan '10
Arriving into London in the morning, struggling with our massive amount of bags (Back to left luggage) and then into town to our hotel. Chris's high school bestie, Alex, met us there and took us on a very long walk through London and to eat at Wagamama. After that, Amy and I went shopping, while Chris and Alex went to have a few pints. Eventually they had managed to walk to Hyde Park Corner, so Amy and I strolled through Kensington Park and then Hyde Park to meet them. After that, we did a bit more shopping and then went to eat sushi near Picadilly Circus. I didn't take any pictures because I've been to London several times and it wasn't a "sight-seeing" trip, but more of a layover and wandering trip.

All in all, I would love to go back to Salzburg again someday, it was incredibly relaxing and everyone was so nice and helpful!

xoxo