It appears that our tire is beyond repair and we need another one, so while waiting for this to be negotiated, we thought we would explore closer to home, in fact, on the edge of Doha. We went looking for Borj Barzan Fort in the Umm Slal Mohammed area. Barzan means "high place" in Arabic. These were lookout points in the late 19 century to protect a precious water reservoir. This is not very old, and it has been repaired quite a bit by the looks of it. Anyway, it has paths all around it and is well maintained. You can walk up the steps and look out from the top, so we spent a pleasant time until sunset.

The ubiquitous crescent moon on the top of the tower now has a great deal more significance to us after experiencing the anxious awaiting of the crescent moon for the start of Eid. It is very different for us not to know the exact date of a holiday and, if you have been fasting all day for the past month, it must be excrutiating having to wait one or two more days until the moon has been sighted by the official committee. I noticed in the shopping centre yesterday, the abeyas are much more colourful now, especially the ones the younger girls are wearing. Instead of the usual decorations of silver or black, or occasionally gold, I noticed lots of colourful trims. I will be interested to see how long the period of celebration is for, and when they return to the usual colours. A friend had told me to be particularly careful to wear conservative clothes during the Holy month of Ramadan as she had actually been told off by the clothes police in the mall saying she was not appropriately dessed. I am not sure whether there really are "clothes police" or just someone who was offended.

On the way back we went to a new grocery shop that we had driven by every time on our way out of town. Yesterday we had the time to stop and take a look. They certainly had gone "over the top" for their Eid decorations. I actually took a small video clip of this as it moves continuously!

Now this is what I call decorating with lights! The actual store was really nice and had great ethnic vegetables and in fact was nicer I think than our regular store. I thought this was a cheaper store, and yet they carried the "dutchy" line of products attributed to Prince Charles, as well as a huge cheese selection and quite a lot of different products from our usual store, things that I thought I couldn't get in Doha. This was definitely a "find". The night before we had finally tried out "Turkey Central" which is basically a fast food restaurant but with really tasty middle eastern food. You can eat in, rather cafeteria style, but we opted for schwarmas to take out with some tabouleh and babaganouch. The fellow making them was a going concern, he churned out a huge quantity of them in the time we waited for our order to be filled. A really good cheap meal - a far cry from the fancy french restaurant I had been hoping to be taken to at La Cigalle - oh well, another time. A few doors down from Turkey Central, we went to Patisserie Swiss, which we have seen all over town and is in fact a Lebanese bakery and nothing swiss about it. But they have a huge selection of pastries with pistachio nuts, dates etc. so we picked up a selection to try for desert. There always seems to be something new to find and experience. One more day, then it is Friday and hopefully we will have a new tire so we can go further afield.