He's doing pretty well these days, I tell you! This was another fine creation by the "Top Chef" trained, Nicholas Yates. A delicious pesto lasagna.

This was all from a bug bite..crazy! And it stayed like that for 3 days.

To top the last SUP session, we went for a full moon paddle starting at 9pm. A fun crew gathered and ventured out for a quick paddle that turned into a mammoth 2 hour session.

Most of us had head lamps on so we were able to see all the marine life in the shallows. When you paddle during the day and you can't see past 20cm down due to salinity and the sun's glare, you wonder if there's anything down there. I know there is a ton of marine life down there just waiting till I paddle over the top. We saw millions of small and medium sized crabs and quite a number of needle nose fish. These fish literally jump out of the water and "run" across the water flicking their tail to propel them up and forward. They are amazing. We caught several unaware we were there until the last second and then you'd see them run away across the top of the water. One even banked itself on the shore and then managed to flip its way off. There's another type of fish that would just jump out of the water. One jumped onto Jen's board, almost hit her thongs off her board and then flopped back into the water.

The crabs were the funniest, they would just stop and stare at the light from our headlamps. Kareem managed to come from behind, that's what she said, and pick them up. He picked up two that were of eating size but the rest were smaller than these. We went down the main off-chute of the channel and saw so many crabs mating. We thought one was eating the other but we realised our mistake. We have now nicknamed that particular channel "Honeymoon Alley".

Shame there's no beers sold at this little burger joint otherwise these would be the bomb! Opened recently in Abu Dhabi, Grand Central is definitely a new favorite a super cute place. Nick thinks they might rival his famous Paul's from home...super juicy patties with all the favorite fixings. The kicker is the sweet potato fries...which we both love.

Jen had noted that there would a high tide early one Friday morning so we thought we might use the day to get up and go for a sunrise paddle in the mangroves. It's our favorite place to paddle and getting early at sunrise is definitely worth it, we just don't do it often enough!

We both participated in the annual Abu Dhabi Triathlon along the corniche.We completed the spring triathon that had a 750m swim, 50km bike, 5km run and we did all of it (bar the swim) together.

Our times for the discipline were:

Swim - Jen 12mins (1st in!) Nick 14 mins
Bike - both 1hr24mins
Run - both 29mins
Total - 2:21:51

Stoked to have finished and looking forward to the next one.




 

 
Have you heard James Morrison? Singer and songwriter of albums like Undiscovered and The Awakening. An awesome singer and an awesome concert at the Dubai Jazz Festival. The concert was super chilled and he is a great live act. Everyone has to check out the single super funky Slave to the Music. Full of awesomeness.Good times with Nina, Sheila, and Eric.

We've been lucky enough to meet Jose Sanchez and to sample his paella. First of all he cooked a massive Spanish omelette that turned out as big as a cake. I was waiting for him to write on it "Happy Birthday" in red capsicum. Then he starts a fire in his backyard and sets up a massive pan. He started some onions sizzling and then some other veggies. He then dumped in a ton of seafood broth, the water that he had cooked some prawns in earlier. After he put in rice and there were 5 of us there but I'm thinking, is that enough? He let that slowly simmer away and put muscles and prawns in too. It slowly developed so much flavour and it just tasted so goooooood. Amazing bbq flavours from the wood fire pit too.



Thanks Jose but I apologise. The chef should never have an empty glass, bottle or can on them. Your wine glass is empty.......

We were waiting until we moved to get new fish and this past week Nick brought home two new ones! Since Nick is in charge of pet names (I get to name the kids one day), he went with a Modern Family reference, Clive Bixby and Julianna. They seem happy in their new home, we'll see how long they last :)

Since our move we been enjoying riding our bikes around Yas Island and enjoying Nolus, a cafe just down the road from us. We can ride there, which is great and even better they open early and have breakfast. They don't really have breakfast places here in Abu Dhabi unless you visit the hotels, but more and more western style cafe's are popping up and Nolu's is quickly becoming our favorite.

We are looking forward to many more of these with friends!