A random weekend trip brought us to Doha, Qatar. Only a 40-minute flight away, Doha is home to…err…the 2022 World Cup? It was a nice getaway, offering the chance to visit Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service campus, a really cool made-to-look-old-but-actually-pretty-new souk, an art museum and more. Some highlights below…
Category: Video
Al Ain
Deemed the Garden City, Al Ain (or “the spring” in English) is the birthplace of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the first president of the United Arab Emirates, and it has the country’s highest number of Emirati nationals. There are a bunch of cultural, nature-inspired and modern activities (aka, the mall) on offer. We…
Off to the Races!!
After talking about it for months, we finally decided to check out a camel race. The main obstacle was how early the races occur – typically starting at 7am on Friday mornings. So despite some expletives uttered when the alarm went off, we got up early and headed to the track. When we arrived, it…
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea??
So, a random dream turned into a reality – becoming a PADI-certified scuba diver – and it all happened in less than three weeks. Through my new friends at Al Mahara Dive Center, I conducted an e-learning session, 4 pool dives and 4 open-water ocean dives to have the ability to dive up to 60…
Egypt – Wrap Up
In what promises to be our last post about Egypt, we wanted to share some random images and stories that didn’t quite fit into our previous three posts. One interesting story was from our visit to the Cairo Tower – the tallest building in Egypt… On the last day of the trip, we went up…
Tennis Anyone?
As a surprise gift for landing a job, Megan gave me some tickets to the 2010 Mubadala World Tennis Championships in Abu Dhabi. Taking place only a few minutes from our apartment, this three day tournament over New Year’s Eve weekend brought together six of the world’s best to slug it out. We were fortunate…
Egypt – Evolution of the Pyramid
Gosh – the title of this post reads like a boring college course, doesn’t it? But not to worry – I’ll make it brief and promise no quiz afterward… During our trip to Egypt, we had a chance to visit some of the more obscure pyramids (obscure = not many tour buses). While not as…
World’s Most Expensive Christmas Tree
To help offset our disappointment of not being with family and friends on Christmas, Megan and I turned to one of Abu Dhabi’s great attributes: excess! And few things in Abu Dhabi scream excess more that Emirates Palace Hotel. Costing more than $3 billion to construct, it is rumored to have the highest hotel construction…
Egypt – Riding a Camel
After three months of living in the desert, Megan and I finally had our first camel ride while visiting Egypt. Gimicky? Of course! But it was still fun! To be honest, except for sitting much higher, the experience was very similar to riding a horse. The one real big difference, however, was getting on and…