While everyone else may have stopped visiting weeks ago, I think fall may be the Hilton’s very best season… The season of playground play and beach exploring! Both are pretty much out of the question during the hot spring and summer months, so Miss G and I are taking full advantage now that we can bear to be outdoors without being in a pool. This morning we had all kinds of fun on the beach digging for creatures, collecting treasures, and writing and reading words in the sand, and next week we’ll try doing a little playground tour with Miss G’s bike. ☺
Today we kicked off Brad’s week long Eid vacation with a family trip out to Khiran. We love it out there. It’s peaceful and beautiful and you really don’t feel like you’re in Kuwait while there, which makes for a nice break from the everyday. Of all of our visits, today was by far the busiest with around 25 others spread between several groups {great minds think alike, apparently}, but it was chill and lovely, as always.
While driving all the way out to 4th Ring Road and the 55 to pick-up groceries isn’t my favourite thing {especially when the drive takes an hour and 25 minutes like it did today!}, gosh do I ever enjoy shopping at Saveco… The bright white interior, the wide aisles, the specialty and organic selection… It’s all so lovely and civil. Gracen loves it too. Not only are there adorable mini shopping carts for munchkins to push around, but there is also a pretty awesome indoor play area for munchkins upstairs. It’s part of the Hamad & Shahad toy store and it’s very much like the Hilton’s playground that Miss G loves so much.
Besides nature and long days outdoors, one of the things we miss most while living in Kuwait is hanging out in libraries and bookstores. Back home in Canada, Miss G and I visited our local library weekly. We’d make a morning of it, curling up to read several books before selecting 25 or so to take home. She’d sign them out at the check-out computer herself using her very own library card and then we’d do it all again the next week. We loved our library routine. On top of that, many rainy mornings were spent visiting our local bookstores. We’d browse, play, read books, and then pick one or two favourites to take home to add to our collection – a pretty fine way to spend our soggy days, I’d say. Here in Kuwait it’s not quite the same. While there are {some} bookstores and small libraries, most are filled primarily with Arabic books {rightfully so} and the English books that do exist are often of the cheap, generic variety. There is, however, Q8books, a very cool little used bookshop we finally made time to find and this afternoon.
Though we had an early doctor-themed birthday party with our families back in Canada a couple of weeks ago, I thought it would be nice to get a few of our Kuwait friends together for a real birthday celebration after a long summer apart. Since we’d already done the big party thing, I knew I wanted to keep this one small, super low-key, and easy to put together, which preferably meant not hosting it in our apartment {oh the disaster that can be created by a clan of little ones in a short amount of time!} While I did consider hosting it on the beach at the Hilton, it’s simply too hot to do that right now – even early in the morning. So when the opportunity to have it at Play {a fun indoor play space in the city} came up, we jumped on it! We love Play and visit regularly, so we already knew that we could expect a fun {and clean!} play space that all of our guests {aged 18 months to 6 years} would enjoy.
This morning as my little love and I snuggled in bed as we always do, I asked her what she’d like to do today. Her response? ‘Go to a farm!!’ Oh dear. While I do know of one organic farm in Kuwait that I’d actually really like to visit, I wasn’t prepared for today being the day. After taking a moment to give it some thought, I remembered the horses I’ve seen at the 207 exit while travelling down the 30 recently… Luckily Miss G thought visiting horses on the side of a highway was close enough to a day spent at a farm, so that was that.
Oh my word… We very possibly may have visited the most beautiful place in Kuwait today – Khiran Beach. We’d heard about it through several different friends, and today we finally made a point of going. After a family breakfast at The Early Bird and an early ‘rest time’ for Miss G, we packed up the vehicle and headed waaaay out towards Wafra. The drive itself was pretty interesting as there were literally hundreds of tents and bouncy castles set up in large pods along the highway, and as we got nearer, several different herds of camels, sheep, and goats.
We followed the directions we’d been given to a tee, but ended up at a point where we were 99% certain we were somewhere very wrong. We were in the middle of a new residential area, and the place was absolutely deserted. Several streets were lined with large sand embankments, fences, tractor tires, and ‘Construction Zone – KEEP OUT!’ signs. What we didn’t realize initially was that that was exactly where we needed to be. After Brad had been sent ahead to scope out what was on the other side of the embankments, we piled out of the vehicle, made our way through a mess of sand and tires, and found this. An absolutely gorgeous beach all to ourselves.
Despite the fact that it had been raining on the way out and we came dressed in hoodies and scarves, it wasn’t long until Grae was in the water. Lucky for us, the sun came out and completely made the day. We enjoyed a picnic, wrote ridiculous things in the sand upon the request of Miss G, and took her home salty, sandy, and exhausted. It was a good day.
Another gorgeous morning and a few new sand toys meant another day spent at Anjafa Beach today. We scoured the beach for treasures, opened a treasure shop, built sand castles, talked to stray kitties, and took about a gazillion photos… It was a good morning and I’m so, so grateful for the lovely weather we’ve been having here in Kuwait. Before long, we’ll be be melting from the heat, so we’re soaking it in while we can.
Finding nice playgrounds to visit in Kuwait is no easy task. While there are a good number of them scattered around the country, most are fairly disastrous. From our experience, they’re often smeared with food, littered with fast food garbage, and on the dangerous side due to broken equipment that seems to take months to be repaired.
Today Miss G and I ventured out to one of my favourite bookshops in Kuwait… Jarir Bookstore! It’s located right inside Hawally Park, which is sort of weird, but makes for an interesting visit.
Today we ventured down to Anjafa Beach to check out the fun-looking playground we’d passed by a few days back, but were disappointed to find that while it looked cool from the road, it was basically a hot mess up close. Other than being filthy {something we’ve grown very used to when it comes to playgrounds in Kuwait}, many pieces of equipment were broken {and sharp} and the play area was surrounded by construction holes, wires sticking out of the ground, and stacks of bricks. Not quite what we were hoping for….
Luckily though, the beach area in the same park was quite lovely. Besides a few fishermen way down the way, we pretty much had the entire thing to ourselves and spent the morning finding treasures, dipping our toes in the cool waves, and making footprints and drawings in the untouched sand. It was a really lovely morning. Now if only the weather would stay just like this year round…
