Saturday of my youth's desires

Alicia here. Today was Saturday in the United Arab Emirates, and an excellent Saturday it was. This morning Maureen picked us up for a jaunt to the blue souk in Sharjah (right).  This is where we went to several lovely carpet shops and learned a LOT about carpets. We met a few fantastic carpet-vending characters who showed us carpet after carpet; Iranian carpets, Tibetan carpets, Afghani carpets, of all sizes, designs and qualities. Synthetic carpets, hand-made carpets, Tabriz, Nain, Caucasian carpets; Geometric, Fish, Floral carpets; wool, silk, cotton carpets; all the carpets that one could imagine. And to my chagrin, the more we learned about carpets, the more we learned we have expensive taste. Kind of like wine, I suppose.

We didn't buy any carpets, but we did take some business cards and will probably go back, after Dan-o brings home a few paychecks.  To satiate ourselves in this shopping wonderland, we settl

ed for purchasing a few new toys and trinkets, a couple of which are pictured here. One, Dan's new shisha pipe.  Another, my 

new pashmina. 

This afternoon we watched The Assassination of Jesse James at home on the laptop and it was, predictably, pretty great. Then the DVD man stopped by and sold us some cheap DVDs, so we've got Juno, Persepolis and I'm Not There on the agenda. Right now I'm eating an orange grown in California. I'm trying to figure out how it got here....