Today's adventures

My pals picked me up this morning for a jaunt around the Northern Emirates, and we started in arty Sharjah, at the heritage district, replete with museums, an old souk, a fort and a lot of authentic-looking people milling about.

At the souk I bought myself a pashmina, an old gold candle-lantern and a red & silver perfume bottle, all for around $28. Then we went to this cool old gulf-architecture 2-story desert house, with lots of old rooms and furnishings and things, and we were the only ones there.

The strangest thing happened there; there was a room with a sign on it that said 'Ahmed bin Obaid' in arabic, and I asked this emirati guy who Ahmed was. So he told me...this guy then a few minutes later scoped me out in the room with all the information about traditional gulf architecture and struck up a conversation by asking, how do you know how to read Arabic? And I said well, I've been practicing. And he said, over the course of about 20 minutes, well, my brother is married to an American and she quite likes it here and how do you like it here? And I'm so sorry it is Ramadan otherwise we could offer you some tea and dates. And please step in to my office, I will give you a book about this house, and please take my phone number and name because we would love to have you back after Ramadan. And after I accidentally walked off with his pen and then tried to return it, he said no no you keep it so that you will remember. Well, I'm sure he was just being polite, but I was certainly flattered.

After that we drove to Ajman where the heritage museum was...closed. Then we travelled on to Umm al Quwain but took a wrong turn and ended up at Hamriya port, a very boring-looking blip on the map. Well, guess what we found at Hamriya port? Approximately the most awesome beach ever (pictured here) with no people, no hotels, no restaurants, and nothing around as far as the eye could see except for a bench or two and a whole lot of seashells. This was a very fortunate wrong turn, since I will definitely be back at this Hamriya beach in the future. After getting back to the freeway, it was on to original destination UAQ, where we stopped for lunch at the beach hotel (delicious) and drove up to the UAQ heritage area where everything was...closed. As long as we were that far north, we decided to hit the license-free liquor store before heading back to Dubai, to at least make it worth our while. Needless to say, the liquor store was...closed. :)