Paint the sky with stars

A photo collage for a lazy Tuesday morning. Our new sofa is far, far too comfortable for 4:30 AM. It's make Turkish coffee or go back to bed.

Here are some of the beautiful things that caught my eye at Souk Madinat and the Umm Sequim beach on a lovely evening out with Mike.

The last photo shows a rainbow collection of the Arabic chandelliers that I covet for our currently naked dining room celling. Makes for some dark dinners. Underneath is the usual assortment of the Sheeshas, which everyone here calls hubbly-bubblies, and you may know as a hookah pipe. There are outdoor hubbly-bubbly smoking areas and when you walk by they smell of strawberrry or vanilla, mint, mango, chocolate. If you can get it as a margharita flavor in the USA, you can get it in a hubbly bubbly here.

Though lots of people enjoy it, Mike and I are passing since it is a tobacco product. It's generally frowned upon for women to smoke it, many tourists do anyway. Dubai is like that. I took a photo of a display in a store a while back of all the boxes of flavors to show you and got busted by a security guard for it. Whoops. Then the computer died, taking all files with it, double whoops.

Many, many places prohibit photography, which is a little bit frustrating at times, but, as Mike and I intone often and well "It's their country, they make the rules." I honestly hadn't seen the sign at the entrance of the store, a hypermarket in Ibn Battuta Mall.

Speaking of whom, neither Mike nor I had never even heard of Ibn Battuta before, but he was an explorer and writer from the 14th century, the Muslim equivalent of his near-contemporary Marco Polo. Ibn Battuta explored further than anyone before him, and his book, the Journey or Rihla, is supposed to make for facinating reading. His full name was Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Abdullah Al Lawati Al Tanji Ibn Battuta. Quite the mouthful. We're hoping to find an English version of his book.

Geez, can you tell the coffee has kicked in?

Happy Columbus Day to all my fellow explorers!