Easter Holiday Adventures

As Matthew is in grad school, we are limiting our travelling until he is done (fingers crossed January 2014) to day and weekend trips. For Easter holiday, we decided to explore a bit more close to home. For our first little jaunt, we went up to the Emirate of Sharjah which is just north of Dubai to visit the gorgeous souk there. 

Sadly, I don't have any photos of this trip as I forgot the camera, but we ventured first into the animal souk where they had oodles of birds for sale including peacock and peahens which we immediately decided that but of course we needed a pair if we ever have a home with a garden here! (on second thought since they live about forty years, perhaps it's not such a good idea...) Then we went over to the Blue souk which is a lovely building and specializes in antique, jewelry and rug stores which is disastrous for our wallets. Actually, our rug guy, Rashed, who we got our new rugs from that I showed you before, has his store in here.

We did make it out with only one small purchase - a beautiful necklace as an early birthday present for me from my sweet hubbie. 

For our second adventure, we went over to Oman with one of Matthew's students, Hamed, who we are very fond off. He has been wanting us to visit for ages, and we had been trying go during the cooler months before the brutal summer temperatures set in, so this was our last shot this year.

Before the UAE was set up forty years ago, the border between here and Oman was fairly nebulous and people moved freely about. Hamed's family has lived in one particular Omani valley, Wadi Jizzi, for the last hundred years or so, but in the sixties they moved down into the Omani town of Buraimi which used to be linked with our Emirati town, Al Ain. Despite it being two countries, it was an open border until about ten years ago when it got fenced off. Thanks to the varagies of geography, Hamed's parents ended up getting Emirati citizenship and moving into Al Ain proper, although they consider themselves Omani.

not much of a road....

Hamed's grandparents have a weekend place in the wadi (valley) next to their date farm, so we set off to visit them and to see all the old abandoned villages that Hamed grew up exploring. After about a 12 mile trip up the valley on what could only optimistically be called a road (thank god for Hamed's SUV), we reached his grandparents place which is just idyllic with a robust garden, goats and chickens. They are just about the sweetest people ever and at every turn kept stuffing us with amazing food. After saying hello, we went down the wadi to the swimming hole which the boys enjoyed and then back up to house for lunch.

Fig trees!

That is Hamed's Grandparents' place all the way on the top right of the picture. For perspective, we went swimming down in that river at the bottom of the photo.

After lunch, and then a recuperating nap from the tumble that I manged to take on a slimy rock and Michael's tumble from bounding about (but the sandwiches we had packed broke his fall although they were a bit the worse for wear!) we set off to explore some of the small villages on Hamed's family's land. Most of these were finally abandoned in the fifties, but the remains of others are much, much older. This valley has been the site of battles between different tribes for years and Hamed was telling us that his great-grandfather used to have to month long assignments to the watchtower to keep a look out for marauding members of another tribe.

You can just see one the villages we visited at the top of this picture.

The villages were littered with remains of life there. The pot that Hamed is holding below, he gave to us and has ended up on our bookcase and the boys got a few little shards for their rooms.

This is the village from the top of the other picture

After another quick drink with his grandparents (at which his grandmother tried to give me one of her goats and when we said that we had no garden, she tried for chickens on our balcony!), we headed out. We ended up getting home very late, utterly exhausted and a bit bruised, but it was a really great day and we have some lovely treasures and memories to show for it, although thankfully no goats.