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A Date With Dates

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DATES! They're a staple of the Saudi diet, and most here in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are grown in Al Hasa, the largest oasis in the world. Al Hasa boasts over 3 MILLION date palm trees, according to residents there. (Wikipedia says there are 2 million. Either way, that's a whole lot of palm trees!) Al Hasa (also called Al Ahsa, depending on who is doing the translating) puts on a date festival every year. The flyer sent to us was completely in Arabic, which should have been a hint of things to come. We had not explored much of the country around us, outside of the city we live in, so we decided this would be a fun small adventure. On the trip from Khobar to Al Hasa, one sees many camels and their male herders perched atop the camels. If you look very carefully at the camel on the left, you'll see a baby camel nursing. It has a red blanket on it. The temperatures in February are rather chilly for Saudi. The temperatures average from the mid-50's (Fa...
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IN THE MOOD...for Big Band Sounds in the Desert!

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It was a lovely afternoon for music...and to be in the desert. Not two things that usually go together, but for one afternoon, they blended with each other in a marvelous way. Tex and I headed out of our compound, through the city, and out into the desert. We traveled about an hour out into the vastness that seems to be a huge amount of nothing when you see it on a map. Given, the desert is not green or lush by any stretch of imagination, and has very few colors that aren't on the brown side of the color wheel, but once you are actually in the desert, you realize it has a definite beauty all its own. It also isn't just sand. Those movie scenes where the guy is stumbling through the desert looking for water, and there is nothing but sand, sand, and more sand, is accurate in some areas, but not all. The area we were in had lots of rock formations that scaled up rather high. We were headed to a specific wadi, in the Al-Oyun region of the Al-Ahsa Governorate. A wadi is d...
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Mama Mia, Italy's Wonderful!!

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OOH LA LA! I actually heard that several times in Italy! I didn't know the Italians really said it; I thought it was just something Hollywood made up, but I have to admit, it fit what was happening at the time, and it sounded just right. So many things about Italy seemed just right. It was a dream adventure come true. Tex and I landed in Rome and picked up our cute convertible Fiat. Thank goodness it was only the two of us, because our luggage barely fit in the trunk and the back seat of the car! Later we were very thankful that it was as small as it was.....but we'll talk about that later.   If you're unfamiliar with the geography of Italy, here is a map that shows the regions of the country. Rome is in the region of Lazia, which is the blue region in the middle. From there we headed north to Tuscany, the yellow area just above the blue. Tuscany's most famous cities are Pisa and Florence. At the top center of Italy is the pinkish area, known as the...
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