Al Ain

Now the proud owners of a new car , we decided to break it in and take a drive to Al Ain over the weekend. Accompanied by Drue and Sarah, we headed there on Friday for the day. Al Ain, commonly known at the 'garden city' is the emirates' second largest city (population roughly 400,000).

The drive up took about 2 hours, and at Drue's insistence (but against our better judgement), we wiled away the time playing favourite car games from his family trips back home.

After arriving in Al Ain our first stop for the day were the hot springs at the foot of the Jebel Hafeet mountains. Unfortunately there was no swimming by anyone as there were separate men/women baths and Claudio and Drue couldn't be persuaded to venture into the designated men's bath. So this was as close as we got to experiencing the waters (which were damn hot, about 40 degrees)

For lunch we went to the Mecure hotel up the mountain, then on to the lookout at the summit 1200m above sea level. The views were great, but somewhat obsured in photos by a sandstorm that day.

The rest of the afternoon was spent driving round the sites: An off-road pit stop which was a great place for photos; an oasis in the town centre and lastly to a fort which was setting up to host the Al Ain Classical Music Festival. What an amazing venue.

Bahrain

We spent the week end in Manama, capital of the Kingdom of Bahrain. Manama is very similar to Bur Dubai (the "old"part of Dubai) but is somewhat sleepy and much more relaxed. Also the majority of people are arabs, while in Dubai they are less than a fourth of the population.

The Bahrain Fort stands on a mound created by successive layers of civilations since 2300 BC. The existing bulding was built by the Portuguese during their occupation of the island in the 16th century.

The first oil well in the middle east, opened in the early thirties, is next to the oil museum and looks like a big tap. Despite this, its still pumping oil apparently.

The Tree of Life is an impressive Acacia tree that stood alone in the barren desert without any visible source of water for at least 400 years.