i'm dreaming of a....

...white christmas?

hmm, let's take a minute to ponder that one... every year, we take a dozen or so cardboard boxes out of storage and decorate our houses for christmas.  my favorite decoration was always my mothers nativity scene, which is ceramic and handpainted by my mother herself (but if you ask her, she isn't creative or "arty" at all).

i'd take out the statues of mary and joseph, the wise-men, the angel, sheep, and camels and place them all in a perfect arrangement.  the tree, i think i usually got frustrated with about halfway through, but the nativity scene i loved from start to finish.

being in the middle east for christmas this year got me thinking; where does this notion of a white christmas really come from?  really i'm just desperate to find ways to connect with christmas while feeling so far away from my family.  and suddenly that nativity scene, those camels with ornate coverings draped over their backs, and the wise-men in their robes and headdress, came floating across my mind once again. and what i realized is that i'm much closer to the roots of christmas here, geographically anyways, than i ever was in the states.

white christmas, camels trekking across white desert sands perhaps?

new views

they say a good portion of the value of real estate is in the location, right? well, needless to say, i'm pretty happy with the view from my new place.  check it out!

 emirates palace

rotana pools and beach

prague

this is a city i've always wanted to visit.  another one of those very walkable cities which is exactly what i did, only this time i had company.  since i arrived to prague on friday evening and was leaving saturday evening, there wasn't going to be much time for exploring.  luckily, i was able to coerce the marketing guy from the glass company i was visiting into walking around with me for the day!  it was much more enjoyable than a tour group and allowed me to see a lot more in a shorter amount of time, not to mention the company wasn't so bad either :)

one of the downfalls of having someone walk you around is that you don't spend much time looking at a map, listing places you want to see, you just kind of walk and take it all in.  it is a very relaxing way to see a city, but i'm afraid i don't remember the names or much of the information about the specific places i saw.  what i do remember is that prague is beautiful and i had an amazing day!  here is a little window into my day in prague.   

 view from my hotel room

 adorable toy store with wooden toys, they just don't make them like this anymore!

 picturesque pastries

 bell tower

 castle guards

 pretty church at castle

 old jewish cemetary in prague, nothing like the cemetary i visited in milan.  there are about 12 layers of graves and literally thousands of graves... interesting history, check it out here.

 love the detail in this door.

 i climbed a ridiculous amount of stairs to nab this view!

 they have this great idea in Prague to use these beautiful vintage cars as sightseeing vehicles you can hire to take you around the city, genius!

 a view from a bridge

 astronomical clock at old town city hall

 world's smallest hotel, really.

 town square

i really enjoyed Prague, i must get back there sooner rather than later... one day just wasn't enough!

czech love

november was a whirlwind of a month.  in this time i managed to get a new apartment, experience some of the Formula One festivities, including performances by Kanye West and Prince among others.  and over the Eid Holiday I was also able to squeeze in a trip to the Czech Republic. 

i was invited on this trip by an amazingly creative glass company called Lasvit. the main focus on this trip was to understand more about the world of glass blowing, i even got to give it a go myself  (more to come on this later)!  after my glass blowing experience in the small town of Novy Bor, we took a lovely drive through the countryside of the czech republic to a beautiful spa town called Carlsbad.  remember when i was in italy and found that lovely little restaurant the one that was "a place that dreams are made of"?  Carlsbad is another one of those! this town is famous for its hot springs and a very popular place for filming movies, including the likes of Bond with Casino Royale. we didn't spend much time here, just a late lunch and evening stroll through town, but it was enough for me to know that even though this place may have never been on my list before, it definitely is on the list now as a place to go back to!

 a walk through town

 grandhotel pupp

 buildings are built around each hot spring

both traditional and contemporary.

hot spring

next up.... prague!