Month: May 2011

Here’s where I put some of the pictures that I like that didn’t make it into the other posts . . .

Not that I really like this one, but it’s pretty representative of our weekend. Baby sleeping in the ergo, me waiting at the bottom of the waterslide with camera in hand.

Next time I’m actually going to go on this ride. Really, I am. If I keep saying it, I think it might happen. The funny thing is that I’m actually more likely to go on the quick scary ride than the kid one where you ride an innertube through a dark tunnel and then end up slowly cruising though a plexiglass tube where you can watch all the fish and sharks. That one sounds awfully claustrophobic to me . . .

See Josh inside the tube, inside the aquarium? Kind of cool, but kind of panic-inducing if you’re a crazy person like me.

Carter really wasn’t being a pain in this photo. It was just an unfortunate itchy eye right as the stranger was taking our picture. Another missed opportunity for a family Christmas card that I’m not going to send out anyway.

Playing around with the night setting on my camera out on our balcony after the kids were in bed. It would have been the perfect time to go swimming if only we didn’t have the baby to worry about . . . except we were both pretty tired and had had our fill of swimming by then.

Now for the buffet: our last morning at the hotel we went to breakfast at Saffron, an Asian-inspired buffet. I’ve been to crazy huge Vegas buffets . . . this one was crazier. Probably because it was 9am, but they were serving breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner, and dessert all at the same time.

It was expensive (we figured the kids were around $20 and adults were $40), but by not buying a $9 cup of coffee and getting my latte included as part of the buffet, it was practically a bargain. They brought the kids hot chocolate and there was a juice bar to choose from: pineapple, green apple, watermelon, orange, lemon mint, and carrot juices. All fresh. I had watermelon juice and Josh had a blend of green apple and watermelon. 

In the breakfast food category they had pastries galore, tons of different fresh yogurts with fruit, all the normal eggs, bacon, sausage (all beef and chicken based and a separate table with pork versions for non-Muslims), eggs benedict, omelet station, blah, blah, blah. Everything you’d expect for breakfast was there somewhere.

Then they had an entire steam table dedicated to dim sum — steamed pork buns, dumplings, and a bunch of other things that looked dim summy, but I didn’t have room to try them. I had to save room for the sushi — yep, sushi for breakfast. Then there was the middle eastern food table — I don’t know what was on it because I was not interested in middle eastern food when there were so many other things to try, like . . .

the fresh fruit bar that was loaded with pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew and huge bowls of dragonfruit and peeled kiwi. And right next to that was the three tiered chocolate fountain and the candy bar. Yes, at 9am. There were skewers with fruit and marshmallows all ready to be dipped in melted chocolate. The tragedy was that I only had room for one skewer of pineapple to dip in the chocolate.

What else could we have eaten? Smoked fish, enough Chinese food to feed a small country, bread puddings, cold cuts, and I’m not sure what else was out there because there was such a maze of food, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to our table. Even though I didn’t get to try even a fraction of the food possibilities, everything I tasted was great. And now I can say I’ve had sushi for breakfast.

This is the balcony where I didn’t get to sit and enjoy my coffee. Of course, a small cafe americano (espresso with water) in the hotel coffee bar cost $9, so it’s not like I was going to get one of those every morning anyway.

This is where I really needed my hat. We reapplied sunscreen (50) all day long, but I have pale raccoon eyes on my tan face from two full days in the pool. At least no one in our family got burned. I saw way too much lobster red on top of pale white skin and those poor people kept coming back for more.

photo credit: Hoffman family

The mix of swim attire was impressive. Plenty of people in too small suits swimming right next to women in “burkinis,” basically swimwear that provides full coverage of arms, legs and head made out of swimsuit/rashguard material. I loved them. If your religion dictates that you have to cover completely for modesty, then good for you for finding a way to still enjoy swimming. The sad part was how many women were suffering from heat stroke (we actually saw someone who needed emergency attention) sitting in the shade in their regular burquas while their husbands and kids were having fun in the pool.

Sitting in the shallow water was also the perfect spot for watching the boys climb and play on the structure and slide down the kiddie waterslides. One of my favorite parts of the day was when Josh had Camille for about 1/2 an hour and Carter, Caleb, and I climbed around and they took me on all their favorite slides.

 Every 15 minutes or so, the huge bucket at the top of the play structure would fill up and tip over, dumping a huge wall of water over the people standing below. As it got close to toppling, people would congregate around the base, hoping to get slammed by the rushing water. (you can see calvin and carter running away from the impending shower.) Josh and I both said that this is something you’d never see in America because the force of the water was strong enough that it would knock over the littlest kids and force them under until the wall of water stopped.

I have one more post of Atlantis photos and stories, and then it’s back to normal life. With stories to tell of a car accident (small one), a car purchase, and life in a foreign country, I guess our normal life isn’t all that normal.

Way back in November of last year we said “Ma’salama” to our car, never imagining that it would be 6 months, multiple countries, a revolution, an evacuation, and another move before we saw it again. It’s a good thing we can’t see the future because if I had been given a choice back then, I would have opted out of that wild ride.

But now, 40 days after leaving Egypt and three ship transfers later, the Montero has finally landed on Omani soil. It has been offloaded from the shipping container and is supposed to arrive at the American embassy in a few hours. Then we’ll go check it out and see how it has weathered the thousands of miles and see if it has any visible signs of having been on any wild rides of its own. Hopefully the Egyptian port security didn’t get bored and take it for a joyride . . .

But first, we eat. Lucy has been cooking all morning making lunch and dinner for us. Moussaka and salad for lunch and omelets for dinner. Moussaka is kind of like lasagna made with eggplant instead of noodles. Lucy’s moussaka is even better than lasagna. I guess it is a good thing I can’t see the future, cause I wouldn’t have wanted to opt out of this.

ETA: The eagle has been spotted and it appears to be no worse for wear. Even the sealed box of tools and Caleb’s carseat were untouched. If the timing all works out we may be able to get insurance and temporary plates on the car tomorrow and then we can bring it home for the weekend. The boys can’t wait to each have their own seat belt again. I can’t wait for the yelling in the back seat to cease: “you locked the seatbelt! your elbow is in the way! ouch! mo-om! he won’t move over so I can sit next to Camille!” Oh wait. I’ll still probably hear those complaints, no matter what car we’re riding in.

The subtitle for this weekend was, “if only I had more time . . .” I would have taken more pictures of the amazing detail of the hotel decor, taken another shower in the bathroom that had the best rain/waterfall shower head, taken a bath in the soaking tub, enjoyed a cup of coffee on our balcony that overlooked the beach and the pool, gone to another meal at the extravagant buffet that I still haven’t talked about, and I would have taken pictures of it all. I guess I was having too much fun to whip out my camera for most of it. And I didn’t want to look any more out of place than we already were, so I’ll just have to describe it the best I can.

So that HUGE blown glass sculpture that looks like Medusa’s hair snakes met up with Marge Simpson’s stylist was situated under a beautiful stone dome in the middle of the lobby. In the picture on the left you can see the scale — the people are tiny standing under the huge arches.

We were killing time in the lobby while Josh was checking in. I was warning everyone not to touch anything and to pretend that they had actually been in a nice hotel before instead of acting like they’d been trapped in a car for the past 5 hours. Which was a lot to ask considering that’s exactly what they had been doing. And, since we were driving a rental car it had a lovely “safety feature” built in: any time we drove over 120k/hour it would ding, “bing-bong! bing-bong!” Repeatedly. Of course the speed limit was 120k/hour so it would be like having the car set off an alarm any time you drove 65 mph. I thought I was going to lose my mind.

And then the baby screamed for the first hour and a 1/2 and ended up having a poop that got all over her clothes and the car seat (again) and between that and the dinging and the many roundabouts that are collisions waiting to happen, I was very thankful to finally arrive in paradise.

Of course my kids thought the huge lobby was a perfect place to start wrestling. You know, with those huge padded wrestling mats they had lying around.

They stopped wrestling long enough to pose for a picture, but that’s about all I got out of them.

Who cares about underwater themed rooms when you can actually be in the water?