Where In The World?: Food, Water and the Beach

I’m quickly finding out that there’s a lot to do to getting acclimated to a new land. Once the basics are sorted out, I’ll have more time for exploring. I spent a lot of the morning buying/ordering groceries. Paula suggested I look into food delivery for the heavy items such as water. Tap water is only used for cleaning and washing dishes, and since I drink a lot of water, I need to get large bottles which are quite heavy. Fortunately, I was able to set up an account using Paula’s mobile number with Carrefour’s to order online and have it delivered. My order - mostly water and almond milk - is supposed to arrive today between 4-6 PM. Stay tuned...

It’s quite busy and a little disorienting in terms of getting around. So I had a goal of finding the beach and the Jumeirah Beach Walk - a promenade of about 1.7 km. Lots of stores and restaurants as well as kiosks. After a few false starts, I found it fairly easily once I studied the map again. The sand is like the Jersey shore - a little more coarse but very similar. The Persian Gulf is beautiful, and there were some lovely shells and odd pieces of white coral along the shore. As I love the ocean, I am a big fan of beaches, so I was excited to stick my feet in a new body of water! The waves were quite gentle softly washing up on the shore, but signs did warn of rip tides. It reminded me of Point Reyes in CA where the water can look quite harmless but is actually extremely dangerous. Lots of people were swimming - adults and children - so it’s probably mostly fine.

Later, I also took a leisurely swim in the pool at the apartment which was lovely. The lifeguard/pool attendant kept telling me that it was cold. It was a little nippy, but just glorious! And once I started swimming, I was very comfortable.

The next goal in the late afternoon was to find the tram and take a ride on that since I could use it to meet up with Paula on Thursday. This was extremely tricky as I spied the tram line, but no station to buy a ticket or board. Finally, I came upon what looked like a tram stop and followed people inside. That ended up not being the place to board, so I followed some other people to another building which was the spot. Perhaps, I have a future in tailing people...

Ticket machines are tricky in a foreign country, so it took me quite a few tries before I sort of figured out how to get a NOL card or ticket - needing to choose the kind of ticket, how many zones I’d be going through, etc. Further complicating it was a receipt that I later realized was for topping off a NOL card that I thought was the ticket but it wasn’t. I guess I can write this off as spontaneous jet lag that had my brain fogged. After validating the ticket with yet another machine, I was finally ready just as the tram pulled into the station. After riding for a bit, I got off and then went back in the direction I had come from as it was getting dark and I wanted to be back in familiar territory.

The evening was topped off with an Arabian dinner of lamb madghout recommended by Michael the waiter at Karamna, a restaurant by the beach. Apparently it’s a rice and meat dish that’s cooked in a pressure cooker. It was very tasty but there was enough for about 5 meals, so I’ll be enjoying it for quite a few days.