In the need of some carpets for our apartments, Tara and I ventured to the Carpet Souk here in Abu Dhabi this weekend!

There are a ton of shops and they all have pretty much the same carpets and from what we saw, if they don't have one in their store they will go to the next store and get one then bring it back, so how commission or sales work is a wonder. At the same time how they start off with prices is hard to understand too! You really have to bargain hard for a good price on these carpets.

Most of the carpets they have are from Turkey, Belgium, Iran and Afghanistan. I thought most of them would be Persian type carpets, but they had a wide variety of more modern ones as well.

They invite you into their shop and start pulling out carpets for you even when you say no no no! They will unroll the carpets and I think in one shop we had about 10 carpets rolled out on the floor for us...I think they expected us to buy, but we didn't..oh well!

We actually went next door to look for more and I ended up buying 2 there.

This is how it went:

Salesman: How much you want to pay?

Me: 500dhs (3.5 dhs is about $1)

Salesman: No no, I give you good price 1500dhs.

Me: Way too much, I have only 500dhs.

Salesman: Okay okay I give you good offer 1100dhs. lowest price...good price, you take?

Me: No no no, too expensive (As I start to leave the shop)

Salesman: Give me your best price, what do you want to pay..please tell me!

Me: I want to pay 500dhs....

Well about 20 minutes later, more bargaining and looking at other carpets, I not only took home 1 carpet, but found another one as well. He asked 900dhs to start for that one. He kept saying 'good price for you, you come back with your friends' too funny.

So in the end I got two carpets one for our living room and one for our front hall bargained down from his cost of 1500+900 to 500+200...wow now that's a discount.

Even then we probably could've gone lower, although not sure...seemed like a pretty good deal and really couldn't convince him to take only 600 dhs. Just feel bad if people actually do pay what they ask or even half of what they ask for!


They will still unroll the carpets even when you say No...this was one of them :)


Carpets of all sizes and colors

We got a chance to go paintballing last weekend. Which was lots of fun shooting, not so much fun being hit :)

I found it strange that we were playing during prayer time and the field was quite close to the Grand Mosque where you hear one of the daily prayers being played over the loud speaker...

This past week I attended an event for the Expat Women in Abu Dhabi and was pretty lucky to walk away with the most dangerous raffle prize...a huge tray of some fancy dancy Patchi chocolates being given to me.....yikes!

We've experienced a few days so far here in Abu Dhabi so far where the dust and sand settles in for the day. It's not fog, but more of a dust, dirt and sand that blankets the city. By the end of the day you have a layer of silt on your skin and in your hair and it's time for a shower...

Our Japanese friends will find this amusing! We visited a furniture store here and in the back of the store was a Daiso hyaku en store (dollar store)! Seriously everything you would find even food! Funny enough the Japanese prices were still on them, but everything was double the price in Japan. We got a few things as pictured here :)

A bit hazy and hot, but the water is still cool and refreshing! We headed out to the public beach last week, something that we definitely will do more often and could quite possible do every day! It's a public beach, but surprisingly you have to pay to get in. It's cheap though only about $1.75. There is a family side and then a men's only side. You can see the partition in the picture. The family side allows men as long as they enter with women or children.

Supposedly when it was open to anyone many men would come down to look and stare at the females after work (mainly the labourers working on the many projects around town), still in their work clothes with no intentions of swimming or enjoying the beach, just the females! So sounds like now it is much more comfortable to lay out at the beach. And yes ladies can wear bikinis and don't have to cover up at the beach...thankfully! Although there are special swimsuits that Muslim women can wear that cover their entire body.

We got tickets to see Coldplay in March at the grand Emirates Palace, should be a pretty cool place to see a concert, we can't wait!

That's right Reddi Whip and Jello...a bit overpriced, but he says 'worth every penny'

Most people join one of the beach clubs in Abu Dhabi, there are a couple private ones and then there are the ones attached the the hotels. You pay a fortune for the hotel ones and while they are cheaper, the private ones still ask for a pretty penny. We've had tours of two and the popular one 'The Club' would be a great place to hang out on the weekends, but has a 12 month waiting list! The other one Abu Dhabi Health and Fitness is more expensive and just got the worst vibe visiting, like we had no chance of becoming members! We're thinking since we're pretty close to the public beach and have a pool on our rooftop, we might just join the gym around the corner a much more 'local' gym. It's just to bad that our 'rooftop club' can't enjoy guests! If we had our way (and money) we would definitely head back to the Beach Rotana where we stayed the first week and join there $5,000+ a year club.





In our dreams we would be here every day...

This is obviously the only really important piece of furniture we have now and of course...West Wing is already being played :) We will post some more pics soon, a few more trips to IKEA need to be made to make it complete :)



Well we've done it, we've pretty much made a massive white tiled, white walled apartment into a home. I use the term "we" very loosely as you, the reader, may think that we have gone shopping together, we have chosen the furniture and been there to sort it all out and put things in different places. But alas, I can't feign much credit to this awesome achievement; I can't and I won't. It was Jen, my partner in life and partner in crime that made a space a home, that went out with nothing and came back with homely things, and that made the organized chaos (full of boxes and furniture) into our organized home (complete with furniture and maid's room full of boxes).

Some of the highlights for me when I came home were seeing the sofa, larger than life, in the living room and the beautiful dining suite set up waiting for us to have dinner that night (....although I think we went out to eat Indian the first night). The bed was sooooo comfortable after spending two nights on an air mattress on the cold tiled floor. Also the TV. Our pride and joy. A 42 inch LCD HDTV. It's awesome. We've been watching some DVDs and actor's heads are larger than real life on the screen!!! It's crazy, but in an awesome, sensational, excellent way.

The pool is still there but we've learnt the hard way that when the signs say "Guests not allowed in the pool", they actually do mean it. However, don't fret! When we actually do have "guests" that stay, we just have to sign a form and everything should be ok; apparently.

Now, if only the internet company can sort themselves out and actually get us connected at home! Then we wouldn't have to steal wireless from the guy next door. Here's a side note for you all, there are officially only two internet companies at the moment. The major one is governmental managed and the other has only just started so they use the major one for basically everything...

I am sure the list will grow and grow, but I thought I would begin with the ones I have come across so far...

1. Skype (it works to call computer to computer, but the website itself is blocked which means we'll need to get people in the US/AUS to renew stuff for us)
2. FLICKR (we've changed to Picasa Web Albums now)


We'll keep adding to the list as we discover what we can and can't access.

We got lucky...really lucky. I mean how could anything be smaller than our apartment in Japan..not really possible.

Anyways, I've been busy buying furniture for our 3 bedroom 3 bath apartment. To be honest, it's way to much space and will probably only furnish our bedroom and the living room/dining until we actually have visitors come and stay.

The best part is that there is a pool on the rooftop, what else could I ask for!

You can view more photos on our picasa album