On her birthday, Sandra chose to walk down to the shops to check out the restaurants for birthday food. Almost every shop and restaurant is closed until 6pm so we had champagne and pre dinner snacks in our suite before venturing out. She chose Al Tarboosh, an Arabic restaurant, where we ordered take away and then it was back upstairs to our bottle of Chilean Merlot. We had a mixed grill of Arabic meats, a couple of dips, chicken from the grill and salad with plenty of pita bread. As you can see it was a lot of food for $16 so we had leftovers the next night. Please take note of the especially fine wine glasses. They do hold a lot!

Mysteriously, this blog site has returned to English.
It is certainly a lot easier that way.

We went to a shopping centre the other day, one that we hadn't been to before, and took a few pics for publication. There were quite a few gold shops as well as a Marks and Spencer.

This is a view of the ceiling in the mall.

The mall itself.

And the entrance. We actually had to search for the entrance because it wasn't obvious from the car park.

Last night we went to a farewell dinner at the Officer's Mess at the Lansab RAFO base.
This morning we were a little slow after enjoying French champagne and NZ Sav Blanc.
The food was great and we had a very enjoyable evening but we nearly didn't get into the base. There had been a guard change just before we arrived. Those who arrived before us were told to drive straight in. We were asked for our ID cards and when we couldn't produce them we were denied access. A sergeant was called who could read the visitors log and he proceeded to tick off our names. Andrew was on the list and Geoffrey and eventually Robert James but no Sandra. Andrew suggested to the Sergeant that we should go in and leave Sandra outside. That seemed to tickle his funny bone and he decided to tick a name that started with S. In we went but we were a little worried that Suhdra, one of the guests of honour, had been ticked off and that he might not get in. Happily he was already in.

This is the new Opera House which began construction the last time we were here. It is enormous.

Today we went for a drive to see the things that might have changed while we were away. Along the way we saw vast changes to the suburbs but some things like this gateway museum were unchanged.

Just another decoration to the freeway.

By the way, we had Aussie steak for dinner tonight with an Aussie red.

Fat old bloke watching TV.
We have many english language channels on the tv including Fox Movies. There are four news channels from around the world, including Al Jazeera, which are keeping us up to date with the QLD floods and unfortunately the cricket.

This is our "spare room".

And the main bedroom.

We have three Phillipino ladies clean the rooms each day from top to bottom.

When we leave a sign on the beds to say not to change them, they take them apart, dust the sheets and remake them.

The above pic is the terminal at Abu Dhabi airport with cute dome shaped ends on each finger. The windows are all pointed arabic style.

For the aviation buffs I am told that this is the new control tower at Abu Dhabi.

Makes the new one at Melbourne look pretty shabby and dated.

We wre driving past the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque when the lights were on.

These are some pics taken from our hotel room. The one below is a school which is served by a lot of school buses. Check out the school bus pic below. The kids must be tough, and this is the girl's bus.

Typical outlook on an area which is yet to be developed.

Read the signs very carefully. You can expand the pics if your eyes are as bad as mine.

Simulator

Yes folks we now have moving pictures.
Just a short glimpse of the 3D simulator for the aviation sickos.