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With Christopher in town for a few days, he and I decided to have a boys weekend away. Sadly, the girly bars and super nightclubs of Beirut were off-limits, so instead we opted for the historical choice and drove over to Damascus.

Supposedly the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world (Byblos, Aleppo and several other cities also make this claim), Damascus has a fantastic old city complete with winding narrow alleys, beautifully preserved mosques, traditional cafes and tastefully renovated Damascene palaces.

We opted to stay in the Beit Joury hotel, a 300 year old palace which had only been converted into a boutique hotel last year. The hotel was in the centre of the Christian quarter and an easy walk to all the main historical sights. From there we wandered leisurely, munching on a falafel roll (very tasty, but not quite as good as my favourite, Sahyoun, on the old Green line), scoffing down a monstrous cone of vanilla icecream covered in pistachio nuts from Bakdash, then later on sitting and whiling away an hour over some sweet black tea and a nargileh pipe.

Last weekend while we were in the UAE we hotfooted it down to Abu Dhabi for the day. It was great to look around and see what had changed since we moved away from there in 2003, and it was also terrific to catch up with our old pals Barbie and Marc and their two nippers Megan (seen holding hands with Mitchell below) and four week old Chloe.

One obvious change is the completion (almost) of the Sheikh Zayed mosque. This towering edifice has been under construction for more than ten years, and even now is not completely finished. (Landscaping seems to be taking forever.)

It boggles the mind that in Dubai they can build all of this in less than six years (I kid you not - in 2002 there was only a bare patch of desert there). By contrast the Sheikh Zayed mosque just seems to be taking forever.

The old legend was that it couldn’t be finished while Sheikh Zayed was alive. Well, the old guy’s dead now, so what’s the hold up??

Anyway, here’s a collection of then and now photos. The former set were taken during a private tour of the construction site in 2003.

2003 - - - - - - - - -> 2008

As you can see, it’s a bit fancier these days. In fact, it would be fair to say that it’s anything but subtle. In the central prayer hall that’s the world’s largest carpet and the world’s largest chandelier. Unfortunately some goon decided that Sheridan wasn’t allowed to take her chair onto this famous carpet - which seemed pretty rude and uncharitable for a house of worship. I mean, they let anyone walk on it in their stinky funky socks…

And you know what? I kind of preferred the brutalist style of the unfinished product.

We’ve been back from holidays for only a few weeks, but geez it feels like ages since we had a break away.

So in the spirit of true global wanderers (and at the risk of sounding like overpaid expats), we’re off to Dubai for a long weekend. Sun (well, heat and humidity mostly), sand and shopping. Yay!

See you back online on Tuesday.

Here’s a few photos from a lovely day spent lounging beside the pool at Rome’s Hilton Hotel. The weather was nice - warm but not too hot - and the various pools were very inviting. Lunch was delicious, and as you can see here, the cocktails were massive.

A brilliant way to spend the day with some friends (and to wish Lorenzo a happy birthday too!)

Okay, so bear with me here. We’re getting close to the end of this little tour of Italy and France.

Driving on from the coast, we wound our way inland into Tuscany to the fabulous hill city of Siena, which sits among rolling hills of olive trees and vineyards. Details and history of Siena can be found here, while this site has a number of 360 degree views. After a number of days in the car it was a nice change to camp in a hotel onsite and just walk around.

Siena itself is really cool. It is a major tourist magnet, but interestingly the masses tend to congregate in just a few streets and once you head off down a lesser used street you’ve got the town just about to yourself. Unfortunately it’s all hills, so I got plenty of exercise shifting Sheridan and Mitchell around. But that didn’t matter. It was nice to just wander about and explore.

Sheridan had found a website with info about disability access in Siena, so forearmed we were able to bypass the huge queue outside Siena’s stunning cathedral and ducked in through a side entrance.

The Siena Palio

We discovered once we were there that a few days later the Palio of Siena would be run. This is an annual bareback horserace around the massive central square, with most of the town’s traditional clans (contrada) competing against each other. Although we weren’t there for the actual race (there’s no way we could have negotiated the massive crowds), in the days preceding there are huge parades of supporters for each contrada, wandering the streets of Siena and singing their traditional anthems. It was really cool to be sitting in a streetside cafe as a mob of yellow-clad Chiocciola (”snail”) supporters marched past signing in sort-of harmony.

After our week in Normandy we jumped in the Alfa rocket and zipped down to Italy. First stop was an overnighter in Dijon, then on to Geneva for a few days.

Dijon was really nice, and of course we bought some mustard from the famous Maille boutique (including the delicious cassis mustard). Similarly, the drive through the forests from Dijon to Geneva was quite beautiful, especially when our GPS tried to send us off into Deliverance country. It’s quite staggering when you wind up and over the peak of the mountain range separating France and Switzerland, and there way below you is Lake Geneva and dramatic mountain ranges beyond. Just beautiful.

Geneva itself we actually found quite frustrating. I recall Jeremy Clarkson once referring to “the car-hating Swiss”, and it’s immediately apparent why. Geneva is full of wonderful wide boulevards, but most of their width is set aside for trams and buses. And there’s no on-street parking. And none of the traffic lights are synced. It’s great that the city is focused on public transport, but when you’re in a car and trying to get cross-town it’s totally crap. We got stuck in a horrible traffic jam that seemed to be simply caused by there being one lane of traffic each way and uncooperative traffic lights.

We did however enjoy a nice day’s drive up along Lake Geneva to Lausanne, where we had a particularly delicious lunch. Perch fillets cooked with grapes and walnuts for me, tender lamb steaks for Sheridan, and grilled tuna for Mitchell. Yummo.

Onwards from Geneva we motored up to and through the amazing Mont Blanc tunnel. As soon as we were out the other side and into Italy we pulled over at the first highway truckstop for lunch.

Now don’t get me wrong - French food is great and we enjoyed some delicious tucker. But there’s only so much cheese, ham and eggs you can eat before becoming completely bunged up. Italian nosh on the other hand is (for us) everyday food.

So it was a real pleasure to pull into the truckstop and have fresh made tortellini cooked for us right there and served up alongside a fabulously smooth and rich cappuccino. Ooooooh baby.

Anyway, to cut a long blog short, next stop was Genova, then on to Siena via the Italian riviera and the Cinque Terre. Wow this is a beautiful coastline. Windy roads, mountains plunging down to azure waters, little fishing villages nestled in secluded bays. Of course they were all jam packed with tourists, which was kind of a drag, but it is August afterall.

The towns of the Cinque Terre proved to be almost impossible to visit. We tortuously wound our way down to Vernazza, the most northerly of the five towns, but parking proved impossible. So we then made our way to Manarola. Here we got a park near to the town (bless you disabled parking permit), but after about a hundred metres of steep downhill descent we worked out that I would never be able to get Sheridan’s chair back up the hill to the car. So she sat in the car while Mitchie and I headed downhill. Lunch for Mitchie and me was pasta (of course). Lunch for Sheridan was some corn chips, maltesers and grapes. Bummer, eh?

Of course if we’d researched things a bit more we would have seen that there’s a train connecting Genova and La Spezia that goes to the towns, avoiding all the windy roads, steep hills and impossible parking. The train trip is almost completely in tunnels though so it wouldn’t have been as scenic either.

Anyway, we enjoyed the drive, even if Sheridan didn’t get to explore Manarola.

Towards the end of our France sojourn we motored over to Brittany to check out the famous Mont St. Michel. Seen from afar it looks quite spectacular, looming up from an otherwise completely flat plain. As you get closer, you realise just how big and awe-inspiring this place is.

Which explains the thousands and thousands of cars all converging on the same spot.

Our first attempt to visit saw us arriving at midday, along with everyone else in north-west France. So we detoured to Saint Malo only to discover that this was where everyone else not at Mont St Michel had already congregated. We managed to find a nice creperie and enjoyed delicious savoury galettes, Normandy cider and then I had a fab chocolate crepe flambeed in Grand Marnier. Perfect!

Anyway, we finally made it back to Mont St Michel later in the afternoon, and as you can see here, it was absolutely bucketing down. Mega rain. Biblical rain. Which is kind of appropriate given we were visiting an abbey that had withstood every English invasion attempt.

Although the rain and time of day had seen a thinning of the number of visitors, the cramped main street meant that it was still chock a block. God knows how tight it was at midday!

Unfortunately the Mont is not easily negotiable for those with limited mobility, so Sheridan sat it out in the car. Which was a real bugger given we’d driven for several hours to get there. Nonetheless, at least she was spared the several thousand steps (or so it felt) up to the Abbey proper.