Day Trip to Bahrain

Last weekend we took a day trip to Bahrain on Thursday.  It had been a few months since we'd last visited and with the compound virtually empty of people, we were both ready for a change of scenery.  We loaded up the car at 6:00 am and were on our way.  

Doesn't Savannah look happy to be in her car seat?  :) 

Trying to get the camera with her foot.

Shortly after we left, we had to stop for gas, and I thought I might show you what our gas prices here are...I'll do the conversions for you.....

Gas is sold in liters here and the riyal exchange rate is 3.75 riyals to the dollar.  When you convert from riyals to dollars, and liters to gallons that equals......  PREPARE YOURSELF...... a whopping 61 CENTS a gallon! Keep in mind that it is produced over here, and that it is also heavily subsidized from the Saudi government.  Still, CRAZY!

Once we got into Bahrain, we got our rental car and then headed straight to Ric's Kountry Kitchen!  We had a fantastic breakfast which included bacon of course.  Have I mentioned that bacon costs over a dollar a SLICE!  The gas may be cheap, but the bacon is not!  Never the less, breakfast was delicious!  We had the lucky coincidence of meeting up with some dear friends the Feimsters for breakfast and then later for lunch.

After that we did a bit of running around and headed to some of our favorite shops.  First stop was Delmon Pottery.  Delmon is a pottery factory that handcrafts its pieces locally.  Very cool!  I've been wanting to get a piece of pottery with "Railey" written in arabic, so we placed the order.  We'll pick up the finished product on our next trip over in two months or so.  

Next we headed to Toys-R-Us, yes the real deal!  You have no idea how exciting it is to go into a real child goods store over here!  We ended up only picking up some random daily care things, but it was nice to look around. Oh the simple things!

After that, we met up with the Feimsters again for a delicious lunch at a Japanese sushi restaurant called Bushido!  It was a nice treat to eat some great food when our options for eating out are so limited in Jubail.  

We finished up the day with some shopping at various stores and the huge mall in Bahrain.  At the mall I of course got some Marble Slab ice cream and two Great American Cookie chocolate chip cookies.  :)  Delicious!  We left Bahrain at 6:00 and got back to our villa around 9:00.  It was a wonderful day out!