Getting to Know the Neighborhood

Alicia here. This morning Dan and I went to Festival City to do a little "Come Look My Shop" (note; I can now read the name "Festival" in Arabic, and it's spelled "Festifal"), and on the way home, brilliantly decided to try to take the airport tunnel instead of the Al-Ittihad freeway. It worked like a charm. In an ideal world, nobody ever has to go to bed hungry, and nobody ever has to take the Al-Ittihad.

We took a walk after sunset down the road and discovered a fantastic Chinese restaurant called Lotus Garden. It's on Baghdad street near NMC specialty hospital in Qusais. The place had great interior ambiance, fantastic won-ton soup with lots of ginger, and hospitable service. The complete price tag for two including tip came to a mere $21.70 US. Plus, they deliver. I see many pieces of crispy chili chicken in my future. We kept looking around starstruck and musing that this place was "awesome". I think we're still suffering from comfort-shock being back in Dubai.

Dan also successfully booked a week-long trip to Thailand w/ Emmo this morning for early October. Me? I'll be rolling the dice trying to get sevens on the time off and an affordable ticket by the time I can get the time off. We'll see what happens. All in all, an extremely positive weekend. The only negative thing I can think of has been my complete and total failure to locate a single kaffir lime leaf in this city. I've scoured at least three supermarkets in both the fresh and dried sections; I'm pretty much running out of ideas. I *know* people cook Thai food here. I know it! I've just got to think harder.