Friends old and new

On Monday I drove all the way to Abu Dhabi (without getting lost – a miracle!!) to see my best friend and have a sleep over.  It actually is the most boring drive ever because it’s just a straight road that I thought would NEVER end…the only upside to this is I could sing to my tunes as I wasn’t worried about getting lost!  On the way I decided to stop at Yas Mall to kill time before meeting T as she was still working – the whole not getting lost thing left me an hour to get stuff done…

Yas Mall is gorgeous, I absolutely love it there.  It’s a surprisingly tranquil and peaceful place considering it’s a shopping haven.  The mall opened only a few months ago and it still feels lovely and new.  In fact the mall is so divine that even the hypermarket Geant is nice…and for me to say that is HUGE because I really do not like Geant at all!  While perusing the mall I decided that the girls and I need to do a shopping trip up there asap…though I suspect the bank would prefer me not to!

Isn’t he gorgeous?

On the way there I had thought about one special purchase and whether or not to make it.  My lovely friend T has had the same teddy bear her whole life and sadly it was thrown away by the hotel she stayed it. She was gutted about it.  I realised that nothing would ever replace her beloved bear but I thought maybe a new friend to take on her adventures would help a bit.  I took a gamble that she would take it in the spirit it was meant and she did – she was thrilled with her Hamley’s bear!  Best money I have spent in a while that’s for sure, it was great to see her smiling and happy. We had a really lovely evening together, gossiping and watching junk TV and just enjoying the fact we now live within driving distance again!

Having managed to drive back to Dubai with minimum drama I survived a day at work before heading home to hang with my friends. The girls decided to come to mine after work for a chilled evening in so naturally I had to go and get nibbles.  Imagine my horror on making a wrong turn out of Geant at Ibn Battuta (curse the horrid place) and ending up miles from where I needed to be…then the GPS directed me to a truck stop to turn around which was terrifying!  In the end I pulled over at a metro station near my friends house and she rescued me!  Luckily we were all able to laugh about it and I realised how lucky I have been to find two girlfriends I feel totally comfortable with, even if I will never live this down!

How stunning is this? I found it on Google and it appears to be by DeniseAWells.

Not many people are so lucky to find new and lovely friends and have their best mate living up the road!  She is the ying to my yang and now with her and my new mates I really feel I have a crew here that I can rely on.  This is especially vital as Bond is travelling a lot for business!  If I have a guardian angel he is really bringing his A-game at the moment that is for sure!

New Header

For those of you who read regularly (for which I thank you!!)  you will notice I have a new header!!  Isn’t it GORGEOUS?  Now before you all think my ego has gotten a bit out of hand I didn’t create it, would that I were so clever!

The wonderfully kind and generous Mother Mands made it for me, I am really so grateful to her for taking the time to design this lovely and stylish header.  It’s absolutely perfect as per the really poor brief I gave her – somehow she took my vague description and captured just what I was hoping for.  How sumptuous does that wool look?  I want to knit something right now whilst enjoying that drink and having Bond read to me while we enjoy that fabulous watercolour view, the Burj has never looked better!

Now I am a bit tech fail so it’s not quite displaying properly at the moment but please see below so you can see it in its full glory while I work on getting the display size to work for me!

Thank you Mands, you’re a marvel!!

Feeling zen at Xenia

Yesterday at work I got a message on our in-house messaging system from what of my favourite girlfriends out here.  She suggested we head for a bite together and a catch up and I was very happy to accept.  It has been way too long since we had a good catch up as she has been away for what feels like a lifetime but is in fact only two weeks!

We drove over to Ibn Battuta which is a nearby mall with a pretty decent load of restaurants.  We agreed to meet at Xenia so we could gorge ourselves on Lebanese food which I love!

Getting to Ibn Battuta was fine…parking however was a nightmare, there were no places that I could easily get into and I rapidly gave up and decided to give it to the valet to deal with.  I know that sounds ridiculously decadent but it actually cost 3 pounds which I figured was cheaper than my potentially destroying a luxury car which seemed highly likely.  I felt far better about my cowardly parking ways when my friend turned up and admitted she had done the same thing!

We both decided we were intrigued by sushi style vine leaves so had that and fatoush salad to share.  Then we both had kebabs, mine was shish taouk and hers was a different type of shish kebab with cheese and it looked delicious.  Unfortunately we were chatting and just gobbled everything up without taking pictures!  Oops!

Xenia is a lovely place with nice decoration, even a few trees inside which I always get a kick out of and some fun colourful chandeliers.  The staff were lovely and very helpful, we wanted to move table so my friend could have shisha and they quickly sorted us a new table.  The food was absolutely yummy and the menu was vast so I am keen to go back and try some other things!

The only downside to the evening was my friend announcing that she is moving jobs which means I will see less of her.  However it’s a great move for her and I am sure we will keep in touch!

Intimate Iftar

This is the view from their terrace.

Bond has a really old school friend out here who he went to school with, when he moved out here said friend was amazing showing him around and making sure he was settling in.  He even took him out in the car to show him tricks to driving in Dubai (vital as my driving posts will show!)  His girlfriend is equally lovely and has become a good friend to me too.  We have been very lucky to have such good friends.

Last night H invited us to his parents place for Iftar.  We were both so flattered to be included in their family Iftar as it’s a special time for family.  They live on a gorgeous apartment on the Palm with the most amazing view of the Atlantis.  The palm is a really cool place anyway, it’s a piece of impressive engineering that didn’t even exist a few years ago.  This was actually the first time I have driven there in daytime and it’s really impressive.  The buildings are really cool and there are lots of brilliant hotels.  One of my favourite places is there, the Zabeel Saray where I had my first ever meal in Dubai.

A cannon sounds at sunset which signals it is time to eat.  We took our seats at a table laden with food.  It was really a feast!  H’s mother had gone to a lot of trouble to make Iraqi dishes for us.  We started off with lentil soup, it was absolutely delicious, I haven’t had such good lentil soup before.  For the main course we had terrific kebabs, two different salads, baked flat bread with cheese wrapped inside, three different types of pickle, chicken basmati and then the special Iraqi lamb and baked bread dish with potatoes.  Honestly everything was totally delicious.  It was beyond a feast, we ate like kings and queens.

We moved through to the living room for tea and coffee and also lovely brownie bites. It was decided that we had to let our stomachs settle before moving on to the proper sweets. Once we decided we had a little bit more space for food we moved on to pudding.  We had ice cream with a delicious raspberry coulis and H’s girlfriend had made Oreo cheesecake to die for!  There was also watermelon so we could kid ourselves that we were a bit healthy…

We chatted for a while after dinner and then had to head home.  It was a lovely evening and it was great to have home cooked food in a family setting.  It’s definitely something we both miss what with our families being far away.  Hopefully we will be able to do it again soon!

Iftar

I couldn’t resist this when I saw it! They love the ‘Keep Calm’ thing out here, I even have magnets, one says ‘Keep calm, we don’t pay taxes’ and the other ‘keep calm, we still have oil!” Really ridiculous but funny all the same!

Last night I was invited to share Iftar with my best friend out here and her husband. Sadly Bond had to work and couldn’t join us, but the three of us still managed to have a great time! Iftar is the meal that people observing Ramadan eat to break their fast. Now my best buddy isn’t observing Ramadan as she’s not very religious but her husband is fasting during the day.  He thought it would be nice to share the meal with me and I was really touched as it’s a real moment for family and good friends.  It also meant I got quality time with them before N disappears on a long business trip…BOO!

On my arrival I was in awe to discover that H had gone for a run despite having had nothing to eat or drink all day. Given that I would struggle to make myself run even if I was in great peril you can imagine how impressed I really was!  He was thrilled with the Turkish cookery book I had bought him.  I know that’s the cuisine he wants to try next and it seemed like a fitting gift for someone who can’t drink or eat naughty sweets during Ramadan. Hopefully we can have a Turkish feast soon!

We really had so much fun gossiping away.  We had lentil stew to start with and a yummy salad, delicious and healthy!  Then we had Okra and H said it was the most successful attempt he has ever had at them.  It was really yummy with just the right level of spice to it. I was really pleased that they came out so well for him, he takes a lot of pride in his culinary skills so it was great to see all that hard work pay off.  I told him that he outdid himself and it was totally true!

At the end of the evening my lovely friend gave me a bag of the most GORGEOUS clothes that she no longer needs/wants.  Apparently it’s spring cleaning time!  I was absolutely thrilled and she has been beyond generous, going so far as to give me an Herve Leger dress!  I have wanted one for a long time but have never bitten the bullet as really they are so expensive and I figured it wasn’t a sensible way to spend money.  The one she has given me is gorgeous and I am thrilled with it, plus it’s guilt free as far as my bank are concerned!!  I am so lucky to have a friend with such a good heart, it wasn’t lost on me that she put it at the bottom of the bag and didn’t make a fuss about it – she knows how much I wanted one and I suspect that she decided she no longer ‘wanted’ it so she could give it to me to wear for my upcoming birthday. Really it’s rare to find someone that kind who doesn’t want any kind of thanks, she just does things like this from the goodness of her heart.  Considering she’s kind, funny, ambitious and fiercely loyal I am really lucky to have such a friend.  Out here I know it can be hard to meet genuine people – I found N in my first week, someone was looking out for me for sure!

Good friends at the end of the day are priceless and rare!

Berlin knows where the party’s at!

The bear is the symbol of Berlin and the city is full of them!

My parents recently relocated to Berlin and having been there for a few months were absolutely full of talk of how great it is and how much I would like it!  They very kindly agreed to have P and his parents join us to celebrate Christmas so that we could all be together.

I flew out on the 20th to have a few days with my parents before P and his parents arrived.  My mother and I did some serious shopping which was great, the shops in Berlin are fantastic.  They have a wide range of quirky boutiques as well as the big brands.  Also the sales assistants are very helpful if a tad too honest!!  After all the shopping we also had an all important hair appointment, it’s vital to be properly groomed obviously! I was also able to see my best friend who lives there, she wasn’t in a great way after a horrible break up but i was glad to be there to support her and tell her I cared and to listen. Sometimes it’s better to be there for the bad times I think.

Once P and his parents arrived we did lots of really interesting tourist things.  We had an amazing private visit to the Reichstag, we were able to go right into the roof and see the views.  The architecture is incredible! Once we had completed our tour there my parents took us around in their cars to point things out to us. We got out at various spots around the city. We went to the Fuhrers bunker which is so eerie.  They have built a block of flats over where it was and if there wasn’t a plaque there you would never know it was the spot where Hitler died.  The Germans don’t want any place in Germany to become a shrine to him.  Worryingly there were flowers left by the placard…clearly people do admire him and his evil ways.  I can’t really imagine living there that’s for sure! We also went to the Topogrophy of Evil where we saw cells that were used by the Gestapo, the idea of what went on in those rooms is harrowing to be honest.  We also saw the Berlin wall, there are parts still left standing with grafitti on, and then there are cobble stones laid to show where it was.  Even seeing it it is hard to imagine what it must have been like to wake up and realise your life was irreversably different.  People had family the other side of the wall they could no longer see which is just so odd to contemplate.

It was fascinating to see so much history up front and I definitely want to learn more about what life was like when the wall was up.  I realised I was very ill-informed on the subject so will be looking out some good books to help me learn more.

Christmas day we skyped P’s sisters in Australia, it was lovely to see them and be able to wish them a merry Christmas though it would have been even more fun to have had them with us.  P’s niece gets cuter and cuter!  My mother made an amazing lunch of roast duck in a cherry sauce and lots of trimmings.  It was delicious!  Then in the afternoon we opened our Christmas presents!  I was thoroughly spoiled by everyone and felt very lucky to be given such lovely and thoughtful things.

I was very sad to have to leave Berlin to go to London for a few more days.  I had such a wonderful time with my parents and I miss them a lot.  Here’s hoping they come and visit soon!!

Even if you don’t have friends and family in Berlin I definitely recommend a visit.  Especially at Christmas time there seems to be some magic in the air there – the markets were beautiful and the lights twinkling everywhere really are magical!  I felt very festive even if it was a tad cold after 6 months in Dubai…

Random reunion

One of my oldest friends recently had business in Abu Dhabi, and like the legend he is he hired a car and came to Dubai to take me out for dinner.  It really was a lovely thing to do because he is busy and working and has recently had a family tragedy.  Seeing him was so special and nicely nostalgic.

See said friend lives in NYC so I haven’t seen  him in far too long and time always seemed to work around us. The day he announced his engagement party…twenty minutes after I booked a trip abroad for example.  The fact that he was in the UK for two months recently…but I had already moved to DXB.  The list goes on of how many near misses there have been.  Despite that we have maintained a good friendship through email and text and when we saw each other it was like no time had passed.

We talked about all and sundry and just had a nice time reminsicing and telling each other about what life is like for us now.  It was so great to see how excited he is for me and how happy he is that this move has been positive for me.  It was also good to hear all his news, the bad and the good.  Here is hoping his wedding does happen soon!

Oh and fantastically he still knows how to give a great compliment and ensure you get the first taxi – once a gentleman always a gentleman.  I can’t wait for him to meet my partner, that will be a fun night for sure!