Al Ain

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So all this week Evelyn was off of school and Lance had most of the week off as well due to the Eid Holiday. We hung around the house mostly and relaxed, but on Wednesday we decided to make a day trip to Al Ain. It is about 1 1/2 hour drive from our house. A good analogy would be Al Ain is to Abu Dhabi and Beaumont is to Houston. Al Ain hold a special place in the hearts of the local people because it is the birth place of Sheik Zayed, the father of the UAE and the man who had vision for the future of the UAE. We found Al Ain to be suprisingly beautiful. Every street was lined with trees and folage. Every round about of intersection had a fountain of statue. The street lights were black rod iron like New Orleans. Also, alone the side of the city is a mountain, Jebel Hafeet, whick you can drive a windy road up it and there is a hotel on top. We picked a great place to visit, but we pick the wrong time to go. Because it was Eid, everyone was off and everyone was vacationing. Al Ain also has a zoo that is associated with the San Diego Zoo and that was our first stop. The zoo was suprisingly pretty good. Not all of the animals you would see at Houston, but nicely layed out. The only problem was the crowdedness. I didn't now if the stinch was coming from the animals of the people around us. Ewwww. I did get aggrivated twice when adult would move infront of my girls to see an animal when we were patiently waiting our turn. The girls had a really good time and we even ate snow cones. After we left the zoo, we headed to drive up the mountain. It was perfect timing just before sunset. Well so did everyone else, the traffic line was rediculously too long and we would never have made it up the mountain. We decided to come back another time to drive up the moutain. We then headed to the Al Ain Mall because there were several signs around town advertising a circus act at the mall. We saw a clown act while we ate our supper (Pizza Hut). Then we had some delicious ice cream at this old timey looking ice cream parlor. The girls loved it. By this time it was dark and we headed back home. We had a great time in Al Ain and we will be back.