Traffic is dreadful, took 30 mins to drive from one side of the highway to the other at the Pearl roundabout lunchtime. Thursday is the Saudi “Saturday” and they all come to Bahrain to do the things they are not permitted to do back home, mostly in the largest 4x4s you can buy. Which reminds me; we saw a Hummer in a 2nd floor shop window in one of the local Malls today!

Petrol here is cheap, prices you can only dream of in Europe. It cost 4.50 BD for a glass of house Sauvignon Blanc last night with dinner (check out The Meat & Wine Co for a great steak also located at Montecasino J’Buorg & Westfield London). Later filling up the car with unleaded cost the princely sum of 2.70BD. And we found out why there was no water in the windscreen washer – garage chappy kindly added water from his kettle and got his feet wet! So another kettle full was applied to the windscreen to rinse away yesterday’s dust.

Flat hunting is hopefully over. The choice came down to a spacious apartment on 37th floor of a new block “Silver Pearl”, one of three (www.abrajallulu.com) next to the Pearl round about or a good sized 5 month old apartment in a serviced block at the end of a road/building site in Juffair. Both have seaviews, shared pool, squashcourt & gym facilities.

The Belvedere (http://www.optimalbahrain.com/vtour.aspx?id=9 ) is walking distance from the local shops but v v close to the American base while the Pearl is between 2 or 3 of the best malls in town but no pedestrian ways and dreadful traffic jams most of the time (see picture for view of it from our hotel room). Hard choice but the Belvedere won out with Kevin expecting to have the car from frequent trips to Saudi if/when his visa comes through, leaving me on foot as there is no way I’m riding a bike with the local driving etiquette or rather lack of it. I love the way that as soon as the lights turn green everyone except the front car sounds their horn!

Just got to wait now for confirmation from the landlord via the agency that we are sucessful in our application. Fingers crossed….