Beach day

Day 3 - 11th November

Hanging out a bit in the morning, since I did so much yesterday, doesn’t leave me a ton of options for today. Dan suggested maybe the beach or the pool at the nearby hotel. Here, instead of paying for a health club membership, locals pay the hotels for memberships. It makes a lot of sense, since they have so many luxury hotels, with fantastic facilities. Yet after spending some time typing my Blog and hanging out with their dog named Captain, I decided to head to the beach. I had noticed from the bus tour that there was an area that was set up for the celebrating the F1 race; called F1 FANZONE and it happened to be on the beach, perfect.

I grabbed a taxi and was there in 15 mins. The driving here is insane and I don’t think I would ever want to even attempt trying to maneuver it. The beach was nice and quiet and the water was beautiful and warm, ah the beauty of a really hot climate. Although it is still only in the mid 80’s, I’m loving it. I had forgotten the sun block offered to me by Lisa and I had to pick up a cheap towel, for I forgot to ask them which ones I could use. Made my way to a little shop, only place on the beach that sold this stuff, and found that even in a store like this, you can haggle the prices. Plus he gave me back the wrong change when I paid him, so it was even less then what we settled on. I didn’t notice until later when I went to pay for a snack that he did this, I probably would have corrected him in the moment.

The public beach I was on had a lot of pasty white people, from far off colder climates, mostly Europe and Australia, from the sounds of it; which makes more sense for their whiteness, Australians are coming out of winter. I did my best to position myself around some of the other females and try to blend in. I also did my best to not show as much as I would at home, so I left the bikini and brought a 2 piece suit that looked like a one piece. The top looked like a flowing shirt and the bottoms were similar to cheerleader shorts, a little skirt. I think it helped a little bit, but I was stilled ogled at and flirted with.

I stayed out for about 2 hours and enjoyed the sea breeze, it was delightful. When finished, I had called Lisa to ask for a ride back, so while I waited, I had snack and sat on a deck, under and umbrella overlooking the sea. The color is brilliant, I nearly fell asleep from the sereneness . By the way, the fan zone was closed up until later in the evening, Abu Dhabi was presenting a concert to the public that night in light of the race.

Lisa decided that we needed to hit a grocery store while on our way home, for a little lunch of left overs from the Lebanese place. This was one of the placed I really did want visit, it’s interesting to me to see what is offered and how it’s laid out. The best part of the store was a “Pork Section - No Muslims Allowed”; hilarious. And if you want pork, you pay for it too, pricey stuff. The rest of the store was nice and they imported a lot of things from the USA and you paid much higher prices for them as well. But all in all, it was an average store, but they sell humus by the pound/scoop, wonderful!

After a quick lunch, Lisa and I decided today was the perfect day for a nap. When Dan came home a little later, the house was silent and full of sleepers, of course including Captain. Since lunch was a bit late, we also decided that going out to dinner wasn’t necessary. We did, however, have plans to go back down to the beach to catch a concert by the English Beat. So after the evening freshen up, we grabbed a taxi and hit the beach. How fantastic it was to hang out on the beach, 70 degree weather and listen to a cool band, I loved it. The crowd was interesting because there are no other events like this during the year and the young people were very excited. The security at the event were a little unorganized and we had a hard time just trying to find a way to exit the barricades before the rest of the concert let out. We stopped for dinner at a little stand for some Shawarmas. They are the Arabic version of tacos, sort of. These were made with chicken, mayo, Lebanese pickles and an occasional French fry, wrapped in a pita bread or Arabic bread; darn delicious. Finally, we went through the F1 FanZone. It was fun, venders and activities for kids, mostly hype for the race. The fun part for us was going into the area designed to show off Ferrari World, an attraction built near the F1 circuit. We stood in a wind tunnel, raced remote control F1 cars and sat in a F1 simulator and pretended to race, we all had a good time.