Kuwait for the weekend: almost 3 hours' drive north to the border, then mysterious bureaucracy for 90 minutes (no English signage whatever -- evidently all foreigners must apply for a visa and pay some money. I give thanks to a friendly Indian engineer who translated a bit for me), then another hour north to Kuwait City, then another hour trying to find the Ibis Salmiya Hotel (google-maps lists two different locations). We are glad we started out early in the morning. I am recording most of the opinions (good) about the hotel on tripadvisor , which worked out well. Overall, Kuwait was a great weekend destination: certainly happier and a bit more organized than Saudi. Fashionable people and cars in the tourist districts, perhaps more obvious because the women were not monochromatically forced to wear black abaya robes. The weather was surprisingly cool and windy -- we wished we had brought jackets! The National Museum is a must-see, more for its bombed-out condition than
Log of our travels and thoughts.