A Different Kind of Chip

During my visit with my sister in the UAE, I would get so excited when we need to stop for gas.

(Well, once I got past the fact that you don't pump your own gas. They have attendants who do it for you and wash your windows).

She would always end up going inside the gas station store for a soda or cappuccino, and I would run right in there behind her.

I was so fascinated with the foreign snacks. I always heard how they are different from here in the USA. And there I was, seeing it for myself.

Some of my favorites:

Those were good. And hot. I think we have something similar in the USA.

This chip was odd, though.

What in the world is "french cheese"?

Still good. But I think the equivalent at home is the cheddar sour cream chips (Does Lays make that?)

Hot and Spicy Pringles!

They were good. Not super hot, though. I haven't seen these in the USA. (And I haven't had Pringles in years, so hot pringles may exist).

Now for some chips indigenous to that area...

Lebanese mix Baked Lays

Those were good. There's some odd spice called "zaatar" that I absolutely loved. I wanted to bring some home, but it looked too much like weed, and this Oldgirl was not trying to be held up in custom. (Amazon has it, so I will order it. Really). But zaatar is made up of sumac, thyme and a few other spices. Odd flavor, but I was all over it. It was good on these chips, too.

Another baked Lays: Labneh and Mint.

Labneh (which is also an ingredient in the lebanese mix above) is basically yogurt. My sister said that it is drinkable yogurt (so I guess that is like "keifer" at home?)  I was skeptical about the mint, though. Mint on potato chips? Ick. But it was... okay. I couldn't taste the mint, so I guess that is a good thing. But it tasted like a sour cream potato chip. Interesting. Let's just say, I didn't buy it again.

I was all over those chili and french cheese chips, though! Those were good!

For the Love of ICE

There is one thing that I thought I'd NEVER ever take for granted in life.

ICE

Big beautiful bags of ice, readily available at every grocery store and gas station in my city.

Why do I say this? And who cares?

Because something interesting happened, and it was funny when I think about it (after the fact).

I should've known I was in for some problems when I was on my 13 hour flight to visit my sister Kentucky in the UAE when I would stop a stewardess on my Qatar airlines flight and and ask for something simple.

"Can I have a cup of ice?"

"Why?" the stewardess would ask each and every time.

I'd blink and hesitate before answering. "I just want a cup of ice. I want to chew some ice."

And that would be followed by a deer-in-the-headlights look from the stewardesses.

One even asked me... "Are you sick? Is something wrong?"

"No. I just want some ice."

Listen... the way they were looking at me, you would've thought I asked for a cigarette...

...while pointing up at the no smoking symbol up on the ceiling of the airplane.

Man. I just needed something cold. They kept bringing around water every 2-3 hours. But I was hot. Or anemic. Who knows. I just wanted some ice. I think part of it was just me wanting to entertain myself on such a LONG flight. Ugh.

They would eventually bring a cup of ice. But it would be in a 4 ounce plastic cup. I wanted to ask if they had in 20 ounce Solo cups in the back of the airplane, but that would be asking too much.

So when I finally made it to my sister's place, and she said we needed to go grocery shopping, I was happy about that. We could get a bag of ice.

Well let's just say I didn't see any bags of ice.

On our second grocery shopping trip, I did see some....ice. We were passing a freezer section and I spotted it out the corner of my eye.

A box of ice.

A BOX of ice.

"There go some ice," I said to my sister as I snatched up the box and threw it in the shopping cart.

I could understand why the ice was available in such a small quantity. My sister's fridge is about half the size of a regular sized fridge at home. I have a huge fridge that has french doors and a freezer at the bottom. My sister's fridge is about as tall, but half the width.

So I wasn't surprised at the idea of "boxed ice".

But when I opened the box, there it was, my ice.

Individually wrapped ice cubes, that is.

*crickets*

A closer look revealed how individual these cubes of ice were.

"Betchu won't chew on that," my sister said as she watched me examine the neatly packed cubes of ice.

She laughed. I wasn't amused.

"Whatever, man," I said as I fought to open the package. "I can let it melt down and then I can chew it."

And that's what I did. It was a fight, though. Opening the packs wasn't that bad. Popping them out the package took a bit of finesse. But I worked it out.

And my sister heard me holler a few times when I saw her headed for the kitchen, "Hey, brang me a package of ice from the freezer!"

LOL

The ice thing went on the whole time I was there. Let's just say they aren't big on ice in the UAE. Not like we are here in the USA. The only time I could get a substantial amount of ice was when I would order it at a fast food spot. Beverages were served cold at sit down restaurants, but I had to still ask for cups of ice.

"But the drink is cold already," one waiter said.

"I know," I said, already familiar with this scenario. "I just want a cup of ice."

Now the boxed ice worked out well for my sister, as it fit perfectly in my sister's tall slender fridge. It was definitely a space saver.

The scenario was the same on the 15 HOUR flight back home, me asking for cups of ice, them looking at me like I'm crazy.

You best believe once I got back home I picked up a bag of my FAVORITE ice from the Whole Foods.

Bags of ice made from spring water. SOOOOO GOOD.

YES. All I could do was just stare at the open freezer of ice in Whole Foods. I even took a picture.

Never again will I take simple ice for granted. I was even happy to see the dry ice container at my local grocery store.

I have NO idea what I would do with a block of dry ice.

No idea.

I was just glad it was available.

And I know I will not take ice for granted ever again.

Vacation Abroad!

I have been on VACATION!

That is such an odd word, as I have not been on vacation in a few years. I have traveled on the company's dime, but that don't count!

I have been in the UAE. And I am posting from there... and here are a few of my favorite pictures.

My favorite tourist spot so far: The Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi!

The Mosque was beautiful. And the history of it was amazing.

My favorite buildings were in Abu Dhabi.

They looked like something out of the Jetsons.

My favorite building so far: The Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

That is the tallest building in the world. It was nice to see it (and hard to take a picture of since it was so tall). It costs 500 dirhams (approximately $125) to go to the top. We will have breakfast on Christmas there. A tad bit cheaper than going all the way to the top. (The restaurant is 3/4ths of the way to the top).

I have been having a great time so far and I have a gazillion pictures. I hope to post some this week, so stay tuned!

Catalina Islands, DR Vacation pictures

Continuing with these vacations pictures... On to my Dominican Republic Catalina Island pictures. I wasn't all that excited about going to the Dominican Republic. I'd gone there for my 40th birthday, and I was going to stay on the boat. But it turns out that we were going to one of Carnival's private Islands, and they were having a big barbeque, etc., so I decided to go and have a look see. (All late as usual. The folks I traveled with left earlier that morning. I think I went over near noon). Here's a shot of the island as from my cruise ship room balcony.

How lush and green it was. The boat didn't dock at a pier. We stopped out in the middle of the water a good half mile from the shore, and they let the lifeboats down. Those didn't look very... sturdy. I am taking a picture from a big double decker open air party boat.

I was NOT getting on those rickety looking lifeboats unless we were sinking like the Titanic and needed to get the heck out of dodge. So I went to the back gangway and jumped on the big white double decker boat.

(Incidntently, I had to ride one of those suckers to get back to the ship. That was some PURE tomfoolery. Ugh. Here's us standing in line to go back):

Pictures of the shore from my time on the big party boat.

White people know they like to lay out in the sun.

I found a shady grove of palm trees to lay out under.

A picture of our ship from the Catalina island docks. I like to be where I can see the ship. That way, if some mess jump off, I can swim out to the boat! One of my favorite pictures of the trip- a palm tree blowing in the wind.

Another picture of the shoreline. I think we were getting ready to sail away. A picture of the calm blue waters when we left.

It was a nice 3 hours for me in the sun under palm trees a good stone's throw from the beach. There were some small shops there, and I bought a couple of shot glasses. I ate my lunch and read my book, then got back on the boat.

People went hiking out along the lush greenery of the shore, but I wasn't up to looking into that.

Just wanted to relax on the beach, and enjoy the cool breezes... on purpose.

Stay tuned for more pics next week:)

Grand Turks Vacation Pictures

So, I guess I will blog...

I just need to just get back on the horse and BLOG.

I feel better today. One of those, "I feel nauseous, but if I sit still, I will be alright" type of days. But at least I'm alert, and not half comatose. I am not at all smurfy, but at least I'm moving around and working.

Easiest thing to do is put up vacation pictures. I don't have to think too hard about those. Can't say I'm particularly thrilled with them. They do not take my breath away. But we'll put them up anyways!

First up: Turks and Caicos.

So here's a map of Turks and Caicos.

As you can see from the map, that is a little tiny island on the far right hand side of the map above.

O_o

A bit small isn't it? Hmm...

No we didn't go to any of the big shiny islands of Turks. From what I read, those aren't highly populated. That small island is where the capital and the main population of around 6000 people are.

Here are shots of the island as our cruise ship approaches.

A beautiful shot of palm trees. A picture of our Phat ship! Here's the capsule that John Glenn landed in when he orbited the earth back in the sixties. Being a scientific Oldgirl, I wanted to jump out of the van and run up there and touch it! But you know I couldn't do that, lol. The post office...

We also saw the welfare office. We wanted to stop there! Our driver wouldn't. :(

The local library.

The National Museum...

Our driver...

I was worrying him before we left, wanting to know if he could get us back to the boat on time. I did not want to be left. He said "Ma'am, it will take us only an hour, hour and a half."

Yes, the island is THAT small.

He even drove past his house to show us where he lived, lol.

The water was beautiful.

Here's a gas station.

We thought that was FUNTY! 2 pumps! We'd be in line for HOURS in the ATL if there were 2 pump stations. And I only saw 2 gas stations on our tour. As you can see, it looks like a ghost town!

More of the pretty water. We actually saw some humpback whales! They were moving to fast for me to get pictures.

A picture of a rock... and more water.

Turks art! It was expensive.

Turks main attraction: the Lighthouse.

*crickets* Nice. But it needed a good coat of paint. We didn't get to go in.

And we even drove past a horse and donkey farm. Beautiful horses... roaming freely.

Roaming so freely that they walked right up to our Van. They even blocked the road.

My cubicle mate, the Cowgirl Cre, rides and owns a horse. I know why her horse pays attention to me, and I know why these horses were pushing up on our van: they thought we were gonna hook them up with some FOOD.

Once they figured out that we weren't, they got the heck on.

LOL.

This was a nice little quaint island. Very quiet. It is less than 7 square miles in size. The driver said there was hardly any crime, and you could even take a walk in the middle of the night without a problem, and that everyone knew everyone around there.

If I ever go back, I'll just get dropped off downtown. I'd like to go to the museum, and roam around downtown. I would also like to visit the neighboring island, Salt Cay, which has a population of 80 people and is less that 3 square miles in size.

Both places would be GREAT writing retreats... hmm...

Vacation Pictures, Part I: Bon Voyage

So, as you know, I had a nice 8 day cruise...

It was my friend The Green Eyed Bandit's family cruise, but I call it my birthday cruise, since it falls near my birthday!

I wish our family did this type of thing. But who am I kidding. Our family doesn't even get together. A cruise? Yeah right! That's a stretch.

Bandit's folks let me run with them. They are a jovial crew, treat me like one of their own. And I'm happy about that.

Our ship's point of origin was Fort Lauderdale.

So here are some pictures of us sailing out of Fort Lauderdale.

These are random. I don't feel like putting them in order. So here we go:

A yacht!!! I wonder who it belongs to?

Very nice! It wasn't even as loud as I thought it would be. And it's as big as those houses!

Beach houses! Looks like something off of TV.

View from my room balcony: the lifeboats.
Good to know if some mess goes down, I can jump straight down on one of them suckers and drive it away!

View to the right of my balcony.
This messed up many a good view of a sunset. Humph.

A nice view of the piers and shore.

Look at the nice beach houses!



Honey, I don't even have to have one of the big ones, I'll be just fine with one of the ranch looking ones! The flat ones!

The big majestic ones are still nice, though.

Other big ships and boats in water!!

I like the big tan house here, with the palm trees in front of it.

I'll glady take that white ranch beach house.... and then just visit my next door neighbors. LOL

Shoot... I'd even live in one of these condos. Not as nice as the house, but they will do!

Finally a picture of downtown Fort Lauderdale from the ocean.

Nice indeed...

Like I said, I didn't know that Ft. Lauderdale was so close to Miami. If I would've known that, I would've went down a couple of days earlier and ran around a little.

So those are my sailing off from the USA pictures! Stay tuned for more!