Category: Travel

I am going to Dubai tomorrow and coming back Saturday. I really don’t feel like going to Dubai, all I feel like doing is just sleeping in late and then ordering a pizza while I watch some TV on the couch. This would be the third weekend in a row in which I am traveling, but unlike the last two trips, Dubai doesn’t interest me. I won’t be taking my laptop with me and I don’t think I will be moblogging from there either. Last months bill increased nearly 600% from my usual because of my moblogging!

While in London I was able to walk around and discover the city without holding a large map and looking like a tourist because of a simple software I was able to get for my phone called A-Z London Maps. I don’t think I would have been able to enjoy my stay without this incredibly easy to use and practical software.

You don’t need a GPS device and you don’t need to connect to the internet to be able to use the map, the software installs everything onto your phone. To use the software all you need to do is type the name of the street you are in and the software will show you on a detailed map where you are. This helped me a lot since if I needed to find my way back to the hotel I would just check on the map to see where I was and then plan my route. Also if I found a street I liked I could easily find my way back. If I was using a regular paper map it would have taken me ages to find my location on it but with A-Z maps I just type my street and the software instantly circles my location on the map.

There are maps for London, Paris, Dubai, Barcelona, Helsinki and more but they only work on some Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. You don’t need to buy it to try it either, you can download the map and try it out for 30 days before you decide to purchase it.

I only found 2 problems with the software or should I say there are 2 things I would have liked the software to do. The first is the option to work with a GPS device. Although every street corner in London displayed the street name it would have been more practical if the software automatically recognized where I was. The second thing I would have liked would have been the option to search for shop names and then have the software find it for me on the map. Of course thats asking for to much but still, it would have been nice to have.

Final score is a 4 out of 5. If you are interested in the maps you can check out the Lumisoft website for more details and trial downloads. [Link]

A lot of you have been recommending a variety of restaurants for me to try out ranging from Thai, and Lebanese to Italian and American but no one even recommended a good Fish & Chips place! While walking around today I found a small cozy place where I had Fish & Chips for lunch.

One store I fell in love with here in London is called Size?. Size? is a sneaker store but they seem to have the coolest/funkiest collection of sneakers I have seen all in one place. Majority of the sneakers I saw today I had previously only seen on SneakerFreaker.com and DrJays.com. Now I am trying to figure out which sneaker to get, I only want to get two but I have around 10 I like. Some of the sneakers I found and liked are displayed above and below this post.

All those people are waiting in line to get up the Eiffel Tower. Its not even peak tourist season and it was slightly raining so imagine how long the line would be mid summer on a nice day. [YouTube]

We have Yan Yan’s they have Nutella Snack & Drinks. It comes with long stick biscuits, Nutella chocolate dip and peach juice!

My Gulf Air flight arrived at 7AM to Paris. Kuwait to Bahrain was a pretty lame flight, the plane was really old and the seats extremely uncomfortable. Bahrain to Paris was a completely different story. This was my first experience with sleeper seats and I love them. Now they aren’t as comfortable as real beds but they are more than enough for long night flights where you need to get some sleep. The entertainment system is crap though, its nothing like Emirates on demand system, its just the regular old system still used on Kuwait Airways flights.

After landing and checking in to the hotel we decided to do a bit of sight seeing since our first meeting was at 5PM. The weather here is great, yes its raining but I miss rain. It feels like winter and its hard comprehend how its 52 degrees in Kuwait and just 15 degrees in Paris! I should pick up my work schedule tonight and hopefully I will have some free time to do some shopping and take in the sights. [YouTube]

I am now in the Bahrain airport chilling out in the business lounge. There is free wifi here and since my connect flight to Paris leaves in nearly 2 hours, I have a good chunk of time to kill. I like the Bahrain airport, it feels very cozy.

I am at the Kuwait Bookshop in Muthana and just picked up the last copy of the Paris City Guide by Wallpaper*

According to survival rates based on seating, it turns out the further back you are seated on the plane the higher your chance of surviving a crash. [Link]

I just found this site while browsing and since I am going to be in Dublin for a few days in August for the NIN concert this site is going to be really useful. Everything looks delicious. [Link]

I took the picture above tonight when I was in Gimayze, an extremely popular street on a Friday and Saturday night since its packed with pubs and restaurants. Tonight it was empty and its for the same reason I posted about earlier which is people are afraid to go out. I’ve never seen anything like this here its strange, usually people in Lebanon go out and party no matter what.

Although I was in Lebanon around 3 weeks ago a lot of things have changed here mostly related to security. It seems people are starting to worry about all the bombings that are taking place and it shows with the extra security precautions.

My hotel for example doesn’t allow cars drive up to the entrance anymore and while entering the hotel I now get scanned with a metal detector. Bliss Street where the American University is located, now has yellow no parking warning on both sides of the street.

Yesterday evening I also passed by the ABC mall in Achrafieh, a place thats usually packed with young people shopping and hanging around at the cafes but yesterday when I passed at 9:15PM half the stores were closed, the other half were closing down and there were barely any people around. Since the bombings are taking place at night, everyone is afraid of the dark.

I am not worried about the bombings but its pretty obvious that this years tourist season in Lebanon has been killed.

My MEA plane was supposed to take off at 11:15AM but after boarding the plane turns out there was going to be a delay. After 2 hours of waiting on the plane with no AC we were taken back to the airport transit area where we are now waiting for the plane to either get fixed or something. It really sucks.

note: on the bright side The 4 Cats are with us on the same flight.

I went to the Cedar Lounge yesterday at the Beirut Airport while I waited for my flight since they have a business center with free Internet. After getting frustrated with the slow connection I decided I would go over to the kids section since the last time I was at the lounge they had a bunch of PlayStation 2’s in the kids room and one of them had a MotoGP game. I figured to kill time I would play some video games. To my astonishment it turns out the kids room was recently overhauled and now had 4 new Xbox 360 stations complete with extra wireless controllers and a bunch of games to choose from.

I ended up playing some Gears of War until it was time for me to leave. Since kids are in school the kids section is usually deserted with only business travelers hanging around outside. One thing I was surprised at was the lack of security camera’s in the room. It is extremely easy to steal a wireless controller, game, xbox hard drive or even the whole xbox if you really wanted to.