the last update, part 5

sunday and monday were no fun for mom, although she did get tons of time with julian. i was out of commission. i finally decided to go to the doctor on monday night when it was determined that i had a bacterial infection of some sort involving possibly strep throat and the upper respiratory tract. once i hit the antibiotics, i started to feel better. just in time for the longest day ever on tuesday, mom's last day here.

we raced around trying to do everything we were supposed to do in the days before, including: 2nd trip to the blue souk to pick up the stuff we ordered (and chat more with pashmina man, who gave julian an egg to go with his chicken), visit to RAK ceramics, 2 dirhams plaza (like the 99 cent store, same crap), lebanon springs bakery and manar mall to get some odds and ends.

i would like to report the funny story re: the bakery - i tell mom to go inside and see if the stuff looks interesting enough to her to buy and bring back home for everyone to try at easter. i tell her to look in the trays on the counter on the right side when she walks in. she goes in for like a minute and comes out and says, "they don't have anything in there. forget it." i was skeptical, but we had more stops to make. once we got home and she was finishing up packing, i decided to go out and get a box of treats for her. i went back to the bakery to find trays of arabic sweets just as i said. i don't know what she was looking at (or how she could miss what i was telling her), but the guy kept giving me samples of stuff to try and i got a nice big box full of stuff.

in the evening, we finally ate at the tower links golf club. they have an arabic restaurant, a pub and a cafe all in one. the beauty is, you can order off of any menu in any dining room. the arabic restaurant looked kind of fancy, but when we went into the pub, there were people smoking everywhere. so i ask the host, "is there somewhere we can sit where people are not smoking." and he goes, "oh don't worry - the people only smoke the shisha outside." i replied, "not shisha, cigarettes." look of shock like why would anyone object to inhaling second hand smoke.

they ended up opening a corner of the fancy dining room for us and roped it off as non-smoking. people came in wanting to sit there, but they told them they'd have to wait if they wanted to smoke. and they did. they dimmed the lights and lit all the candles for julian. really nice service. and delicious food! we had a sampling of quite a few things, including tabbouleh, an arugula salad (rocca salad), cheese sambousek (like a boereg, but in a spring roll wrapper), fish and chips and an arabic bread stuffed with minced lamb and halloumi cheese. way too much food. but a good find - we'll be back for sure.

from there we headed to the airport and said goodbye to mom until the summer! and until the next visit...