Fights over forts

My kids are addicted to electronics. Two weeks of Christmas vacation and worn out parents hasn’t helped. I’ve chosen the path of least resistance lately — if you fight over it, I’m turning it off. Otherwise as long as you take turns watching your sister, I’m happy to have you not interrupting my own love affair with electronics. I can handle the remote, my laptop, phone, and still knit a skirt. Multitasking at its finest.

But I got tired of seeing unwashed bodies still in pjs (or just underwear) late into the afternoon and eventually my threats of unplugging them weren’t enough to squash the bickering. The final straw was when we wanted to do something fun as a family on New Year’s Day and you would have thought I was marching them off to Auschwitz. Dour faces, attempts to smuggle PSPs and iPods into the car, and moans of, “Why do we have to go?” caused me to sarcastically declare 2013 as the “Best Year Ever!!”

What was the torture we had planned for them? A visit to the camel farm and the Bahrain Fort. The camels are fun because there are about 500 of them and it’s open to the public. No tickets, no admission, no hours. The female camels are grouped in pens, but  the males are each tied in place so they have a small area to themselves. (We deduced this after a bit of camel underside investigating). 

s t r e t c h ! ! ! 

 

one of the girl camel pens — there are over 500 camels on the property

 

As you can see from the photos, they enjoyed it, but it still didn’t keep them from complaining about the second stop on our tour: the Bahrain Fort. We already had one failed attempt to visit it under our belts. When Nana and Poppa Chartier were visiting we followed the GPS through some sketchy looking back roads until we got to a locked gate. The black flags and the guy shouting something in Arabic via the mosque loudspeakers made us reconsider and head home. This time since I had the more reliable GPS with me (Josh), I knew we’d find it.

At least Josh ended up in the same wrong spot we did (and I momentarily felt vindicated), but then he continued on down the road and found the entrance quite easily (remember, persistence is not my gift). It turns out there’s a beautiful museum that serves as an entrance and introduction to the fort. Something the GPS would have taken me to the first time if I had known to type in “Bahrain Fort Museum.”

Huge multi million dollar museum

 

old city, new city

 

Of course we bypassed the museum and wandered around the grounds, cause why look at photos of it indoors when you can explore the real thing? It turns out that inside the museum are free headsets that will take you on an audio tour of the fort and grounds: the history, how it was built, who lived there, what the big moat was for, and other such trivia (I’m assuming — we didn’t discover it until the end as we were leaving so I didn’t actually listen to it). It would have been extremely helpful in answering questions like, “what was this room for?” Or “was this their bathroom?” Next time we visit we’ll be better prepared. Third time’s the charm, right?

 

Storming the castle

everyone comes to this spot to get their family photos taken. We probably will too before we leave.

What’s in here mom? Their bathroom?

He decided the upper tower window is where the archers must have stood to shoot arrows at enemies.

Our Flat Stanley visitor from the states in front of the Bahraini flag

PS: They did apologize for complaining about going and admitted that it was a pretty fun day after all (but they still wanted to play X-box as soon as we got home).