Index
Day 1 - LAX-DXB
Day 2 - DXB-KWI
Day 3 - Kuwait
Day 4 - Kuwait
Day 5 - KWI-BAH
Day 6 - Bahrain
Day 7 - Bahrain
Day 8 - BAH-DXB
Day 9 - Return
Middle East
After far too little sleep, woke to greet Sam on his arrival to Kuwait. The hotel, as befitting a Luxury Collection property, offered to (and I agreed) send a complimentary car to pick Sam up, which saved a few bucks (KW 8 or so), then it was off to breakfast. In deference to Ramadan, the dining room was fully curtained off from outside view, and obviously only occupied by non-local tourists and the foreign wait staff. Almost everything was made to order and while the menu wasn't bad, the beef bacon was an overcooked mess and the whole experience reeked of just a bit too much formality. Considering the fact that almost all the other guests were in suits and ties perhaps this was the appropriate atmosphere for the majority of their cliente?
Room service for lunch was equally formal, even Sam's mixed grill was on the dainty side and neatly presented. Indian food also seemed to dominate the menu, with a deceptively massive chicken biryani that was far too large for one person.
Sam's first experience with the Careem app was not great. Plugged in a local restaurant, Mais Algahim, for dinner... and the app didn't choose the closet one (which is what we wanted). Worse, it doesn't even tell you the address of where you're going, and it's decidedly tardy in position updates. After five kilometers in the wrong direction we realized it, and at least Careem lets you change the destination on the fly.
Due the unexpected detour, we missed the Iftar crush (the breaking of fast at sunset during Ramadan), and instead found the restaurant by the corniche to be mostly empty. The food was quite good, with some crunchy roll-like things instead of croutons in the salad, and some excellent flatbread that came with the hummus. Sam also discovered they do American-sized portions here; he orders fried potatoes pretty much as often as he can get, and we found this extra order put us waaaaaaay over the top for food. At least his second mixed grill of the day was pretty tasty, and a step up in quality vs. the lamb chops that I ordered. As a final dish, the garlic sauce was more oily/buttery than what I'm used to from local restaurants back home like Sunnin.
One other benefit of the earlier detour was realizing just how far apart things are here. Original plan was to walk to the corniche from the restuarant, but we noticed almost no one walks here, and the corniche was actually further away than expected. So we ended up back at the hotel, where we hung around the executive lounge for a bit instead of exploring the city.