Fear and Loathing in Bahrain

Ernie was having trouble sleeping in the middle of the night and when it was my turn to wake up and entertain him I realized... I was not feeling well at all. My illness progressed and by the time we stopped at Khalifa Bin Salman Port near Bahrain's capital city of Manama I didn't really want to leave the ship.

I had to drag myself to shore and make numerous bathroom breaks but I survived. I grew strong and I learned how to get along.

What to do when you're in a gulf state with no plans... go to the mall! I was too sick to eat anything but I was satisfied that Lydia got to enjoy this Bahraini Raising Cane's. We don't even have one of these in Seattle!

The Avenues mall wraps around the waterfront along Bahrain Bay. 

In Lydia's defense I'm sure she had better ideas of what to do in the country than go to the mall but I think I was feeling so sick and I knew they would have plenty of bathrooms that it seemed like a good compromise.

I thought it was interesting that Victoria's Secret exists here but didn't have any underwear lady posters hanging up in the windows.

There were a ton of stores selling incenses that frequently seemed to be made out of wood. It was a very fragrant mall.

Lastly we popped into the Bahrain National Museum to learn all the things.

Earlier today I was so sick I had to lean on Ernie's stroller like a walker but by this point I was feeling a bit better.

Pope Francis was the first Papa to visit Bahrain and they seemed awfully excited about it.

This bit is maybe my most enduring memory of the whole country:

"Losing the Milk Teeth

An old tradition is that whenever a child loses any of his milk teeth he holds it in his fist with seven date stones, and pointing at the sun he shouts: "Take this donkey's tooth and give me a gazelle's tooth". He then throws the tooth and the stones at the sun."

I am in favor of many more traditions involving both verbal and physical abuse of the sun.

The elevator seemed to be held together by aluminum foil. What could possibly go wrong?

Ern declared he had officially learned everything in the museum and we departed back to our mothership.

We walked through an eerily abandoned immigration check point on the way to the ship.

Embarking Up the Wrong Tree

So we had an unscheduled time sitting at the port in Doha last night and now we had to inexplicably get off the ship to show our passports to immigration and then get right back on.

The Norwegian Dawn is so large that it was difficult to take pictures of.

There was a big aquarium in the port building that we had fun gawking at.

Quickly! Back to the ship!

It was funny because the announcements kept saying that we couldn't leave the port until every single passenger got off the ship and did the passport check. Why they didn't do this before we got on the ship is a mystery. It definitely had a "we're making this up as we go along" feel to it. As time dragged on the announcements repeated in numerous languages until it was clear they were down to like two Italian guys taking long naps and the announcements I imagine were cursing at them in Italian.

Some of the gingerbread houses in the common areas are pretty disturbing.

We did a safety presentation and learned a bit about the ship. If I recall correctly we currently had 1900 guests and a lifeboat capacity of 3000. They were talking about baby life vests being needed but then it was unclear where the heck they were. Finally I called one of the help desks and they said if one was needed that someone would bring us one. How comforting.

When we finally started pushing away from the beautiful Doha skyline some little tug boats guys followed us and guided us out of the harbor.

Ern had a nice new blackout tent thing that fits over his crib and keeps it dark in there for snoozing.

The water situation was a bit annoying. We had an unlimited booze package but this didn't include bottled water. The water out of the faucet didn't taste very good, but the filtered water in the cafeteria had big signs posted about not filling up personal water bottles. So I bought a case of water to be delivered to our room to take care of my people. There was much rejoicing.

Walking around seeing the different cocktails offered at the various bars on board is a nice way to pass the time and explore the ship.

We had some night cap mudslides to celebrate the seaworthiness of our fine vessel. 

Avast! There was a little onboard newspaper where we could read about the fun times awaiting us the following day.