I attempted this post a week ago whilst sitting in the airport reading a new book. June was a hectic month, characterized by 7 plane flights, 4 countries, 2 trains, 2 rental cars and ZERO rigs.
June 5th, I went to Cairo. A breath of fresh polluted air, Egypt has so much soul. Perhaps I’ve been living in the desert wasteland of Qatar for too long, but I found the few days there simply delightful. I saw family, I saw old buildings, I even saw some Whataberger friends. I also ate.
June 9th, I went to London. I met my sister there. She laughed at me when the tube door almost ended my life. We rode the London Eye and saw a musical. We had good fish and chips and we had bad fish and chips. There was karaoke and street markets. There was duck pie and spinach muffins. I even met up with a Whataberger co worker.
June 14th, we rode the Chunnel to Paris. As excited as I was to be riding this trophy of civil engineering, it turns out I get dizzy on trains and spent most of the trip sucking on anti-acids and throwing up on the train. In Paris, we walked. We had hot chocolate and much cheese. I saw an old Whataberger friend. We got massages in the street. We cursed at the tourists like real Parisians. We left early.
June 17th, we rode a train to the south of France. There, I rented a Fiat 500, which my sister had to push out of the parking lot because I didn’t know how to reverse. We stayed on a little peninsula east of Nice. St. Jean Cap Ferrat! There was a perfume factory, tortoise sanctuary, canyoning, beaches and some diving. We ate Risotto and pizza. We laughed and we took photos. We picnicked on the beach. We walked around with cheese and baguettes.
June 21st, I spent 4 hours in Doha before returning to the airport at 1am to fly to Dubai. Here, I had a week long training course for work. I made new Whataberger friends and enjoyed my freedom driving around in a rental car. I visited SoccerDad (from the early, early blog days) in Abu Dhabi. I also remembered I have an expat cousin in Abu Dhabi. I spent the weekend with her, eating too much and talking about anything.
On June 28th, I sat in the Dubai airport. The next day, I went to the US embassy to add more visa pages to my passport.
rigtales 