Euro Trip: London

It was my first time to visit all the cities I talked about before but this is my third time in London, to my surprise, my views of London didn’t change since the first time I visited, I see it as fun and beautiful city, but very dangerous.

Drinking is the theme in London, I’m not saying that the Brits are always drunk but when people have beer and wine at lunch time then alcohol clearly plays a big part of their entertainment, the other reason of taking it as a theme is that on the weekend almost none of them goes home sober and I’ve seen a lot of drunk people but never seen this much.

But enough of the empty half and let’s look at the full half, moving around in London is very easy, you can take the tube almost from anywhere to anywhere, if the tube is under maintenance they will put extra buses to operate on that line and help the passengers to reach their final destinations in the easiest way possible, although some people disagree with this it’s the way I see it.

The weather is not that bad too, I mean after spending almost 3 years in an average temperature of 30 you like to have some cold days and see the rain again, the only thing that killed me is that I was staying in a no smoking serviced apartment and I had to go out every time I wanted to take a cigarette, and it’s really not easy to when it’s that cold and that windy.

The night life in the London is definitely the best of all the cities I’ve ever been to, you just have to have to the time to visit these places, and they have streets full of clubs and sports bars. The underground is the other icon of the city, I like it for one reason, you can mostly go from anywhere to anywhere using the underground and it’s really cheap compared to the taxis. Buying cigarettes was quite an experience, I bought one pack “of 20” for £7.5 only to discover later that it contains only 16 cigarettes.

I have to admit, I liked London a lot, it would be my first choice if I was still in my early twenties, but not now and not at this age, I still enjoy going there every now and then though.

Euro Trip: Barcelona

We left Monaco to Barcelona through Nice airport, and when we arrived to Barcelona we were shocked for 2 reasons,

The first one was that they really don’t speak Spanish, they speak Catalá and it’s the main language in Catalonia, and the second reason was how beautiful the city is, it’s amazing.

We spent 6 days there and I wish I had more time to stay, we stayed in a hotel in center of the city, a 5-minute walk from La Rambla street, which is the most famous street in Barcelona, you can see more tourists there than the Catalan, it full of restaurants and souvenirs shops, and in the weekend you will see thousands of people walking in that street.

Through the six days we visited almost all the touristic and historic areas – except Tibi Dabo Mountain, because the park was closed for maintenance – between the places we visited was the houses of Gaudi, Castell de Montjuic, La Sagrada Familia, and the Montserrat.

Barcelona is a city full of statues, it’s everywhere, in every street, it’s like the old people of Catalonia where trying to convey the story of the city to the next generations through these statues, it all have something written on it, I wish I can read Catalá to be able to read the story.

People of Barcelona are very nice, or at least those that we met, the only problem is that they don’t speak English which made hard on us to communicate with them, but they will try hard to help. The food is not the best, maybe because I don’t like seafood and most of their dishes have seafood in it.

Let’s go back to when we first arrived to the city, usually whenever you visit a city for the first time, once you leave the airport you get a feeling about the city, or at least that’s what happens with me, when I first left the airport I got that feeling of being a stranger which I got in every other city I visited, but once we reach to city center and by looking at people’s faces that feeling started to fade out and it was replaced by hominess, it really felt like home, I mean seriously if I spoke the language it would feel exactly like home.

Walking in the street in the night can be dangerous a little bit but because the streets are full until late in the night it gives you a feeling that you’re safe, considering that not everyone is drunk, there has been some small incidents and the waiters in the café warned us a lot about the thieves in the streets but thank god we haven’t seen any.

Overall, Barcelona was the best holiday I had and the best European city I’ve visited.

Euro Trip: Mote-Carlo and Nice

I will not talk a lot about Nice as I have just passed by it. We landed in Nice’s airport and took the shuttle to Monte-Carlo, it looks nice and quiet city but small and not too many things to see.

We arrived at Monte-Carlo the capital of Monaco, it’s a very very tiny city, only 2 square kilometres, so after checking in the hotel, we went for a walk around city, I can say it’s very beautiful, it has a great landscape with the mountains behind it and the sea in front of it, the buildings are mostly old with the typical old European styles, the streets are clean unlike most of the other European cities and it’s very safe to walk in the night as the whole city is monitored by CCTV cameras, it’s hilly so it’s not really easy to walk around but manageable.

I haven’t seen a lot of youngsters in the city and I started to think that there is no one really lives in it, people just come to work from the close French cities and leave back home when they finish, which I found out later that this is mostly true, and the houses over there are owned by rich people who come to Monaco just for a holiday.

And speaking of holidays, Monte-Carlo has one of the most famous casinos in the world, which in my opinion has nothing special than being the grand casino of Monaco, and it’s where Casino Royal – the movie- where shot, if you don’t gamble just go there, have a look, see how people get screwed by the dealers and leave as quick as possible, for me it was the most boring thing in the whole trip.

If you walk down the road from the casino you get to the marina, in the marina you will find the night clubs which are empty most of the time, not surprised at all, but what really surprises me are the boats parked in the marina, oh my god, some of it looks better than the villas in the richest cities in the world, one of it was 3 bedrooms, with a big living room (or to be more accurate, party room) with a 52” plasma screen fixed on the wall, and the furniture looks like it was specially made for this boat and it probably was.

The city is fully prepared to receive the tourists, full of bars and clubs although almost no one lives there, the condoms are in the hotel rooms, and the hookers are everywhere, in every single hotel, and they have business cards.

Overall, it was a fun trip but I think that was because there were a lot of us as one group.

Finally Moving

And so, Palordinia finally completed it's migration to the new domain (http://www.palordinia.com).

It's been a long and nasty process. I'm really not big on website design, HTML, or any of that stuff. Therefore, as you can imagine, I endured a long, tiresome, and repeatedly frustrating process to do all of this on my own, but I finally made it!

I have read tons of articles about how Wordpress is such a wonderful engine, if that's what you call it, but it sure did give a hard time. And as it turned out, don't use any of those templates designed by third parties, unless you are one fat, sick, genius!

For those of you who are planning to keep an eye on (us), please update your bookmarks/ links (being a bit cocky here :) ). Indulge me, I have a great sense of pride running through my veins at the moments.

So if you came here before, you should go to http://www.palordinia.com  now.

If this is the first time you come here, then next time visit us (here).

If you want to tell anyone about this site, please tell them they can find it at http://www.palordinia.com .

What was that again? http://www.palordinia.com

Finally Moving

And so, Palordinia finally completed it's migration to the new domain (http://www.palordinia.com).

It's been a long and nasty process. I'm really not big on website design, HTML, or any of that stuff. Therefore, as you can imagine, I endured a long, tiresome, and repeatedly frustrating process to do all of this on my own, but I finally made it!

I have read tons of articles about how Wordpress is such a wonderful engine, if that's what you call it, but it sure did give a hard time. And as it turned out, don't use any of those templates designed by third parties, unless you are one fat, sick, genius!

For those of you who are planning to keep an eye on (us), please update your bookmarks/ links (being a bit cocky here :) ). Indulge me, I have a great sense of pride running through my veins at the moments.

So if you came here before, you should go to http://www.palordinia.com  now.

If this is the first time you come here, then next time visit us (here).

If you want to tell anyone about this site, please tell them they can find it at http://www.palordinia.com .

What was that again? http://www.palordinia.com

Euro Trip: Geneva and Veigy-Foncenex

In the past 4 months I’ve visited 6 European cities, I stayed for long enough in some and some of it I just passed by or simple couldn’t stand staying there till the end of the day.

Geneva and Veigy-Foncenex

I arrived to Geneva airport and took a taxi to Veigy-Foncenex, which is a small village in eastern France on the borders with Switzerland, to be honest I went there by mistake, it was not my mistake though, I was told that I better book a hotel room there because it’s closer to our office than the city of Geneva, well, that is true except that it’s really a village like those we see on TV in the cartoons, the green fields and cows, and so and so, but that was not the problem, the problem was that everything closes on Sunday and I arrived on a Sunday, so no food at all, the hotel did not have a restaurant and the closest restaurant was 2 kilometers away and it was closed, even then I was ready to take it, but I needed to work and my Mobile battery was dying out so I asked for an electricity adaptor, and guess what! They didn’t have that, they didn’t have an internet connection either, so it’s simply a place where you enjoy the nature and get disconnected from anything else in the world, so I checked out after 2 hours.

After checking out, I called a cap and of course the cap driver did not speak good English but at least he could manage, unlike the one I took from the airport who couldn’t speak a word of English, anyway, we went to Geneva city and started searching for a hotel, it was not easy as the Clock Exhibition was taking place on that week, and that’s why actually I couldn’t get any of the company recommended hotels, anyway, I found one, it was called Best Western Geneva, a three-star hotel with the very basic needs for a human, at least it was clean enough.

After settling down in my hotel room, I wanted to go for a walk, it was very cold, freezing in other words, but still I went out, that was at 5 pm and the streets were full of people, so my first impression was “WOW I’m gonna have so much fun here” I was wrong, the city sleeps at around 9 pm, there are only 2 or 3 clubs and it only works in the weekends, I’m talking about the clubs of course because in the morning I will be working so will not have time to skiing or do any of the morning activities.

But don’t misunderstand me here, the city is beautiful I loved most of the life style, except for the sleeping early thing, walking is the main culture there even when it’s freezing, the public transportation reaches to every single inch of the city, I didn’t use that much though, I walked like I’ve never walked before.

The other thing I have against Geneva is that it’s people don’t speak English and even if they do they try not to speak it for some reason, I actually found it really hard to eat as most of the restaurants had their menus in French and the waiters and waitresses most of them didn’t speak English or didn’t want to, I don’t know, most of the time I ate pizza, so I can’t really comment on the food.

To Be Continued....

Hawaii-styled Party, and the Ali Baba's cave of Dubai

Shopping for a birthday party is tiresome mission. It is more so when you are shopping for a shirt to wear for the theme party. As if buying gifts isn't hard enough.

So the theme was Hawaii! Basically swim wear, shorts, slippers, and shirts with the maximum number of trees and flowers on them. In a Middle Eastern country, even if it's Dubai, it's hard to find such things in abundance. There was this one shop, tommy-something, in Mall of Emirates who had them, but unless I'm planning to go to Hawaii for a holiday this year, I wasn't going to spend more than 100 Dollars to buy it. Sometimes you wish you were a girl! They are all fit, and they'll show in their bikinis and look sexy. Well, that is not my department.

So, how do we go about this?!

A couple of phone calls, SMS', and BBM's, all lead to one place; KARAMA!! Go to the intersection behind Burjuman, then take right, look for the Filipino shopping center then take right, then pass by the Indian neighborhood, take right, and the from the roundabout head to the Fish Market, then ask people! Of all the people who can give you direction in Dubai, it was an English guy who knew the direction to Ali Baba's cave.

Sounds like Kingdom of Heaven, "Go to where they speak Italian, and then continue till they speak something else."

I have lived in Dubai for 5 years now, and I always knew about Karama, but for some reason it was an undiscovered geography for me. You hear a lot about the things you can find there, and how cheap they are, but you never realize it until you are actually there. It was so weird. It felt like Al Hamadanyya market, Jabal Al Hussein, and Sweifieh all mixed in one.

Salesmen are hunting you at the doorsteps. They speak to you in Arabic, English, Urdu, Hindi, Tagalog, and a combination of all the above. You can find all the "Brands" in one place. It's the only place in Dubai where you can buy a D&G shirt for 20 AED, or an LV bag for 500 AED. CK, Armani, Polo Shirts, Lacoste, etc. It's all there.

Something interesting caught my attention while I was there, the place was swarmed by Europeans. My friend remarked, slyly, that they buy things here and go strut their stuff back in Europe as if it was the real deal.

Eventually, we made our way through the jungle and we found the place we needed, and after a very short round of negotiation we got two Hawaiian shirts for 60 AED. The original price was 70 AED.
In all cases, the party started 20 minutes ago, and I'm heading there now. This better be good. The preparation took the whole day. I already feel like a girl.

Until further notice, I'm retiring from Politics

Politics is such an interesting subject for me. Although a lot of people consider that it doesn't immediately affect their lives, I beg to differ. It's usually the shock waves that reach us.

I've always been passionate about politics and history. The reader can tell from the size of Politics tag how it influences me, and by the ribbon on the top of the page why it matters to me. However, it's been few months short of two years that I started putting my thoughts into electronically written words. But it seems I didn't have endurance to withstand the negative aura surrounding the region. I admit it, I despaired.

Things never seem to change around here. It feels like a room that is closing in, and in the process suffocating any gesture of hope. Palestine continue to robbed and raped, people are still dying, Arabs are still hibernating, and we are at the brink of the point of no return right in the middle of the shit hole. Seeing the same old ugly faces on TV makes me sick to the stomach. Kings and Pawns on a chess board, we are being moved by the same players. By the end of the game, we are all shoved in the same box, but no one seems to understand.

I'll buy myself about two dozen of poodles, and a couple of golden retrievers and start lecturing them about how they should behave.

I'm sick of writing about the same old hopelessness.

And so, until further notice, I'm retiring from writing about politics. Next time I write a piece about, it will something positive to cheer about. That much I promise myself.