Six weeks old already

Incy wincy spider while sleeping is just so exhausting Afternoon drinks and dinner for Daisy at the Polo Club was a nice way to end the week

Zack is six weeks old today and he's growing fast. I'm going to be around until early April, so I'll have had 2 1/2 months here and am loving being such a hands-on grandmother to all my grandchildren. We had a busy weekend. On Friday we had lunch in the mall at Deira, on the other side of The Creek. It's a great mall with really good shops and we did some shopping and had a meal at a very nice, quiet Italian restaurant then the others headed for home and my plan was to do a bit more shopping then some sightseeing. Seven hours and many shops later, it was dark and late and I decided that the sightseeing could wait. I joined the extremely long taxi queue and waited one and threequarter hours for a taxi.

My 6o day visa is about to expire and you can either pay to renew it for 30 days or leave the country and come back in for another 60 days. The closest border is with Oman, 100km away, so we took a drive there, the last part of which was quite interesting, with very strange rocky outcrops, like small mountains taking over from sand dunes and camels. The landscape was very inhospitable and rugged and not much good for anything. Hatta is a very old town, which we did a quick drive around, looking for the hotel, where we parked up and had another good lunch, then Bec, Daisy and Zack found a shady spot under some palms where Bec could feed Zack, and Andy and I headed for the border, 10km away. The private spot turned out to be next to the camel ride track, so every few now and again Bec would be invaded by a well dressed camel with smiling, waving tourists aloft. It kept Daisy amused anyway.

Fortunately Andy and I were only away for an hour. It was a bit of a palaver, but not difficult, just getting an exit visa, queuing for an entry visa into Oman (and an exit stamp), turning around and heading back to the Dubai boarder and getting a new entry visa there. Loads of people have to do it while waiting for residency. So I have now been to the only country in the world that starts with the letter O. Add that to my list.

World's worst picture of Oman from the car window