For months seven of us girls have planned to go off to Dubai to ring in 2012 together!! Yay!! We were all off for the festive days and spent them in sparkly, dazzling, over the top Dubai. It really is pretty. A very well planned city, very very very clean, actually the whole time I felt like I was going to slip on the street, sidewalk, inside floors because everything was so sparkling clean. No, actually, I did slip going up a slippery set of stairs and still days later have a big knobby bruised elbow! haha! But ya the architecture is beautiful, every building has something special about it. The metro system is fast, convienient and again, super clean! Honestly I never thought I would notice a city for it's cleanliness but this was hard to miss, also I think it was something about the intense sun making everything glisten! ahhhh! So we stayed by the Burj Khalifa (currently the tallest building in the world) and gezz it towers over the rest of the cities sky scrapers!! Also we were by the largest mall in the world that had every imaginable store....if, that is, what you dream about. But I being a nonshopper was mildly to extremely overwhelmed. Maybe that's why I, along with several husbands/dads/boyfriends found sanctity standing in front of the worlds largest peice of plexiglass (four stories high) starring at the fish and sharks. Yes that's right, there is an aquarium inside the mall. Not only an aquarium, there are 6ft plus sized sharks, stingrays, eels, scuba divers feeding the fish in a cage, scuba divers checking out the fish (kind of as we are checking them out....who is watching whom?). Also there was a glass bottom boat full of people skimming across the surface of this fish tank. Ya, maybe it wasn't so strange as I was standing there, but now thinking back, this was kind of a unique experience to have inside a mall. So at anyrate we rang in the New Year at an outdoor cafe of delicious Lebanese food right by the lake and the Burj Khalifa!! Oh just lovely! Remenesing about what a great and wonderful year we've all had together! So lucky to be doing all this traveling and exploring! AHH! yay! At midnight we witnessed the best fireworks show I've ever seen!! They had put fireworks all up and down the Burj and had it rigged so they would flash going up the building and going down the building, shoot out of the building, all different things. I was like a kids, I think I screamed, giggled, and jumped up and down through the whole show, OH MY GOD, AHHH!!! Yes, it was that good!!! And then there was this weird and funny techno/dance trance show on the lawn nearby that we checked out! An overall amazing way to bring in 2012, sure to be another fabulous year!!!
My faithful travel companion/roommate Kelsey and I headed to Kuwait City for a few days just before Christmas. It was our Christmas getaway!! People kept asking me what we were going to do in Kuwait....I don't know, just going to check it out see what's going on there! In the airport I spotted my first public Christmas tree on display! YAY! This was on Dec 21. Saudi Arabia is a strict state controlled muslim country, actually during prayer that is broadcast throughout the city on loudspeakers the Omen was warning against celebrating Christmas, new years, and drinking, all things unapproved by Allah. At any rate, there was some Christmas spirit on display in Kuwait! The city was a much less strict version of Saudi Arabia. We didn't have to wear abayas and men and women were seen out in public together, mostly people were on the conservative side but nothing compared to here. There is a really long nicely built boardwalk type thing that runs along for about 10miles of the Persian Gulf. We walked all up and down this to visit the aquarium and famous water towers. The aquarium was really awesome! They had boa constrictor, sharks, stingrays, jellyfish, penguins. There was a huge tank full of all types of fish found in the gulf and we were just in time to see the shark feeding!!! ahhhhh yay!!!! It was us and 30 little Kuwaiti school children!!! AHHHH!! yay! Also for friday brunch we sat out at the harbor where there were tons of outdoor cafes, tons and tons of people were doing the same thing! This was very unlike Riyadh! It was very very nice and liberating to be in the Middle East and have just even the smallest freedoms: drinking coffee, sitting at a cafe outside amongst the people!
A week on the beaches of Goa, India! Delightful, peaceful, restful, and invigorating! My friend Annalize (from South Africa) and I stayed at a yoga retreat right on the beautiful beaches of Goa on the west coast of India. This was in early December and the weather could not have been more perfect!! It had been getting chilly in Saudi (lows of 5 degrees celcius, and highs in the teens). The weather in India was warm beachin weather, actually it is high season for this very reason. We spent the week laying on the beach, attending spectacular yoga classes that were excellent for the mind, body, and soul. We took long walks on the beach, drank beers in the sand, watched the sun set, hula hooped like mad on the beach, enjoyed a beautiful total Lunar Eclipse. Actually this lunar eclipse was really really amazing. It was red as it started which I think is quite rare and could maybe be best seen in Asia, oh check that out, that's where we were! It was the longest lunar eclipse in 10 years, quite a lovely treat! Also this place has delicious fresh foods and fruits and veggies!! The people there were super interesting. A lot of Europeans doing wellness tourism. They came to this yoga resort to do yoga but also Ayurvedic cleanse. This as a big deal it seemed and the best Ayurvedic doctors are properly trained in the art in India! One guy had just graduated from college two days before arrival, actually he was from Akran, Ohio and had attended Kent State, small world. It was so wonderful to actually take a vacation! This was the most relaxing of all the traveling I've done so far! A great get away!!
