A while back all the girls in our group of friends decided we wanted to start having Girls Nights to get some time with each other without kids and allow our husbands the opportunity to take care of the kiddos for an evening, without us. Initially, the idea all started because we were basically jealous that for a year and a half, our husbands get together and play basketball every Tuesday, thus leaving us with the kids, solo for an evening and we wanted to return the favor. Then, we also realized how much of our time together during the days, is focused around kids and we never really have that alone time to have uninterrupted adult conversations! So, we officially started our girls nights, last week and it ended up being a girls day. Two of the girls were out of town on vacations, so three of us, me, Steph, and Laura headed to Bahrain for the day. We technically weren't without kids, but hey, we left Saudi and were gone for HOURS, so I don't really think it mattered whether kids were with us or not.
Our morning started out driving to Bahrain and renting a car. There was a Krispy Kreme donut shop next to the car rental place so we indulged ourselves. By the time I took this picture, we had already devoured a few of the donuts. At that moment, we decided to take pics documenting our day in Bahrain to show how much fun we were having.. Yea- we made it to lunch time taking pics and that was it. Oh well.
Laura got to hang in the back seat with the babies. They were very well behaved so she didn't mind! Very grateful to Steph for being willing to drive us around, even without the GPS that we left back home.
Pretty sure I haven't had a Krispy Kreme donut in months. It was delicious! Heidi D-- something about donuts always makes me think of you!!
Once we got our car and ate breakfast on the road, we stopped off at a local frame shop and dropped off several pieces to get framed. We then headed to find a home good store. We knew the vicinity of the store and knew it was near a tire shop. We found the vicinity and the tire shop and turned. We quickly found ourselves on the far side of a huge open area that separated us from the home store. What's a girl to do? Follow other cars and drive across the huge open area to get to the store! And, that's just what we did!
After doing some shopping, we went to eat lunch. This is one of the buildings we passed. You can't tell in the picture, but in the center of the building are three large propellers that swing and they were actually on that day.
We ate at a Japanese restaurant called Bushido's that some women recommended and it was awesome! The place was clean, nice, and the food was delicious! We ordered lots of yummy dishes and even got Steph to try some edamame. I don't think she was impressed.
After lunch we hit up a REAL Toys R Us-- filled with real products-- Munchkin, Baby Koala, Fisher Price Brand stuff! AMAZING!! I'm pretty sure I even saw something that was Chico brand... I wanted to buy it just because it came from Target. I found the boys some swim things we had been looking for and a few other random toys, even the game Hungry Hungry Hippos. I'm telling you, it can be really hard to find things over in Saudi that you'd totally take for granted having in every store you'd go to in the USA.
Next, we went to a local mall and did some SERIOUS shopping. Okay, so we only went for Marble Slab and Great American Cookie Company, but who cares. Ice cream and cookies.. what more could you ask for? We decided after indulging ourselves, we'd head back to our car and start making our way back to the rental car company so we'd have plenty of time to get ourselves situated for our 6pm pick up time. Before leaving the mall, we ran to Gap and picked up a few things, so we did do some shopping at the mall.
Then, our adventure really began! Ever since Bahrain had all the protests, lots of areas have been closed off, roads shut down, and police force seem to be all over. Demonstrations still occur and we have red zones we're not allowed to travel in. Because of all this, we thought we might have some difficulty getting back to our pick up spot. And.... we did. We thought we were being responsible, mature adults by leaving an hour before our pick up time, but that still didn't help us. We got lost. We got turned around. We weren't allowed to drive in certain areas. It was crazy and hectic. After an hour and a half of driving and driving and driving AND literally ending right back in the SAME spot we started in, AND being late for our pick up time-- we had to call our CP Chem driver who was patiently waiting for us to come and get us. Only problem was, he had to take us back to our original pick up spot so we could drop off our rental car, so we weren't even able to head back to Saudi at that point. We did manage to drop off our car and stopped in a grocery store to look for some needed necessities that we can't find in the Kingdom, and then headed home! We were extremely grateful for the bags of cookies we bought at GACC since they ended up being our dinner!
We did have lots of laughs about this and we were all understanding about the issue! It just made for a fun story to tell our husbands and something that will help keep our first Girls Day Out a memorable one!!
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