03 Sep The Weekend – Day 5
Thursday, April 9, 2009
The Weekend – Day Five
Today started a little late for us – it’s the first day Gary has been able to catch up on some much needed shut-eye. We walked to one of the many malls. It was around 2pm and there were hardly any cars on the streets. Most of the stores on the streets were closed until 4pm – don’t ask me why they wait so late – maybe it’s because they stay up so late eating. However, after 4pm this place is packed – everyone heads to the malls – probably because you can’t go to a movie, a play, the Symphony, basketball game, etc. so they all shop. My friends that know me well know how much I don’t like to shop. However I will say that the malls are fabulous – more name brands than you can say grace over. I’ll also say this is the most I have walked since I got off the plane – it felt great. This is not a “walk friendly” city – it’s always under construction and the sidewalks are limited.
It actually rained today right after a very brief sand storm – that was fun:-(. It lasted about 5 minutes. Just enough to get the sand in our eyes and shoes.
Today was also grocery day for us. All I can say is appreciate all the fresh produce you can buy in the U.S. I wanted to buy some salad “stuff” but the lettuce was limp, the tomatoes were soft, and not many other things to choose from in that department. I ended up buying all frozen veggies figuring that would be the safest thing and hopefully tasty. They have a large selection of lamb and camel. I moved on past that selection and just stuck with chicken. The fruit selection is much better and actually lower in price than in the U.S. Sending out our laundry is also fairly reasonable – $12 US dollars for about 2 loads – ironed and folded. With that said after a few loads the whites started looking really dingy. The water here is not something you drink out of the faucet.
The currency here is fairly easy to understand. It’s called Riyals or how we say it in the south REE YALS. If something is 57 SR then you divide that by 3.75 or 4. You rarely ever get coins back for change – it’s always paper.
We’ve had two taxi drivers that could not speak English so we had to tell them where to take us by pointing. Each time we made it do our destination, they were so embarrassed that they didn’t want to charge us – we still gave them 3-5 Riyals. The people here are really very kind – especially to western women. They call me Madame so you know I like that treatment.
We may go to Dubai on April 20-24 – Gary just found out about a conference he wants to attend. We leave here that Monday and get back on Friday – you know I’m going to hate going to Dubai for that length of time (ha). We had already tentatively scheduled a trip there so if this conference works out that will be great!!
One very important thing happened today – the apartment staff delivered a microwave today and a table to put it on – very exciting!!! Now we can have some microwave popcorn!! It’s those little things that excite me-be grateful for things we all take for granted.
Well, time to sign off – until next time….
Enjoy your day!!
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.