Ba Ba Bahrain
I apologize if you forever have this title, to the tune of The Beach Boys classic, stuck in your head. I see James cringing as he reads this, as I’ve exhausted this song on our two visits to Bahrain since our move to the Middle East.
It blows my mind that in the same amount of time it would take us to drive across Houston, Texas, we can now cross a border (on a bridge, over the gulf) and enter another country.
Bahrain lies in the Persian Gulf, in between Qatar and the east coast of Saudi Arabia. We take the “Bahrain Bridge” through “Passport Island” to enter and exit the country. There are many checkpoints along the way, including a toll, a passport check, insurance check and a car search on your way out of Bahrain, back into Saudi Arabia. This is because many of the perks of visiting Bahrain are the forbidden vices in Saudi Arabia. Mainly alcohol and pork. As Americans, we find ourselves waved through the checkpoints relatively effortlessly.
On our first visit to Bahrain, we found ourselves quickly comfortable at McGettigan’s Irish Pub. With its outdoor garden, live band playing 90’s covers, pub fare and ample libations, McGettigan’s feels like any place we’d visit home in Houston. We enjoyed this place so much we visited it both days of our stay. Day two we took part in the traditional brunch. Brunch and post-brunch, “drunch,” are the prevailing Bahraini activities.
Our second visit to the Island, over Valentine’s weekend, we opted for a more upscale take on “drunch” with a visit to the Art Rotana Hotel. They had a buffet station for every cuisine imaginable, including an entire station dedicated to pork. With these brunch or drunch affairs, you pay a cover charge for an all-you-can-eat-and-drink period of time; typically 4 hours. I enjoyed more champagne than food this visit and I cannot say I’m disappointed about it. A big thank you to our friends for inviting us to double-date with them. James ended up having to work much of the afternoon, but I remained in good company.
There’s a brunch style for every visitor, from down-and-dirty to posh-and-swanky. We’d like to experience them all!
I feel it would do Bahrain a disservice not to mention that there are other activities to indulge in on the island other than the debaucherous. I’d like us to make time for the following:
Tree of Life - 400 years old.
Scuba Diving
Seasonal Festivals
I know we’ll be back plenty of times, so I am challenging James and I to get to all of these.