Elite Suites Hotel Manama

Not much - just waiting at the airport for the flight! Bahrain was both nicer and more boring than I thought, the weather is a lot more forgiving but it's not worth more than about 3 days exploration tops.. Unless you like to get really nittygritty :P

Apparently the Bahrain-Saudi border is on a little island [not sure if it has an official name], which hosts a rest point on either side of the border, complete with matching observation towers. The whole road, which is 45km long, is called the King Fahad Causeway on the Bahraini side, with a different Saudi name.. Interesting stuff! :) Due to it being Ramadan and us not being ...

... old was about the same height as me! They were very cute though :)

We then drove on the Causeway to the Bahrain - Saudi Arabia border [that road in the middle of the sea on the map]. We couldn't cross the border [you need a visa in advance, which is tricky during pilgrimage and they don't just give out visas to lone women anyway.. too much red tape for our likings!] so we went to an observation tower and looked at Saudi looming on the horizon. There was a huge jam of ...

... were fun.  It was pretty clear that this stuff happened to Yemenia all the time---a bit of a recommendation: AVOID YEMENIA IF AT ALL POSSIBLE (given my timing and the fact that I was going to YEMEN, it wouldn't have been very easy).  A few minutes later, Mike came down.  Apparently he had handed his boarding pass to the gate agent and was told, "I'm sorry, but your boarding pass has been canceled."  He was pretty irate.  About 15-30 minutes later, the girl from Yemenia that had checked ...

... before I got picked up, but I got to straighten things out for my transport to the Bahrain airport later that day.

The guy that picked me up was a quiet Indian guy that worked in maintenance. I threw my bags in the bed of his truck and jumped in. The guy’s English was decent, but he wasn’t a natural conversationalist, and I didn’t force it much.

The shortened day ...

... them a line to let them know we're hear. This is the email we got in return: "To send a message to all the people currently subscribed to the list, just send mail to xxxxx. This is called "sending mail to the list," because you send mail to a single address and LISTSERV makes copies for all the people who have subscribed. This address (xxxxx) is also called the "list address." You must never try to send any command to that address, as it would be distributed to all the people ...

... We had a fabulous afternoon chit chatting away with her. We were having such a great chat session that Yvonne opened up a bottle of bubbles and then took out some Whisky. Yay for me! We ended up staying til almost 8pm, and then had to rush home to change and freshen up for our Ramadam dinner in the tent at the Ritz Carlton. Very nice! What a funny experience. During Ramadam, they set up these tents for people to feast in during the ...

... his relationship with essentially an autocratic leader of a country who has often been criticized for human rights violations, Clinton established a scholarship for college students in America to study at American University in Dubai. The scholarship covers both room and tuition. I was one of the lucky 2 recipients of this semesters scholarship, which allowed me to take more courses, and breath a little easier with regards to student loans.

... outside temp, walk not me!) Saturday - The B'day Sleeping well into the day to ward off the hangovers we all jumped out of bed ready for another day in Bahrain. As it was the day of Nan's Bday we had booked ourselves into the Crown Plaza for their 'Friday Champagne Brunch' now anything with an all you can eat buffet and endless supply of Champagne could not be bad, and we were not disappointed. Arriving at 12.30 we were like kids in a candy shop, the buffet was ...

... in Bahrain. I have personally never been to Iraq, and have never fired a weapon at anything that wasn't a paper target, or that I didn't intend to eat. I had never seen this guy before, and yet he was thanking me for what I had done. It shook me a little. What do you say to a guy who's entire family has been killed when he thanks you for saving his life, when all you did was make the jets fly so they could protect Americans? The whole event took place in less than three ...