A Trip to Bahrain

A view of the Bahrain World Trade Center on the way to my first Embassy Medical Examination. Very clean and modern city. There is a 2nd duplicate tower to the right side of the mall. In between the two towers is a very large mall that spreads out away from the Conference Center on the Water side of the buildings.



Saudi Arabia to the Right! Don't want to go there...especially since at this time I was riding around without my passport...I had turned it into the Kuwaiti Embassy. No worries...my driver knew where he was going.



A scary little medical office. This hotel room/office turned X-ray Room gives you an idea of how nice our medical facilities are in the US. Did someone say "Government Healthcare"? I survived so we will get back to the fun stuff!



The Bahrain Fort Entrance. Here is a description from Wikipedia:

Qal`at al-Bahrain (Arabic: قلعة البحرين‎ meaning Bahrain Castle) is an archaeological site located in Bahrain. It is composed of an artificial mound created by human inhabitants from 2300 BC up to the 1700's. Among other things, it was once the capital of the Dilmun civilization, and served more recently as a Portuguese fort. For these reasons, it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005.

Qal`at al-Bahrain is a typical tell – an artificial mound created by many successive layers of human occupation. The strata of the 300x600-metre tell testify to continuous human presence from about 2300 B.C. to the 16th century A.D. About 25% of the site has been excavated revealing structures of different types: residential, public, commercial, religious and military. They testify to the importance of the site as a trading port over the centuries. On the top of the 12m high mound, there is the impressive Qal`at al-Burtughal (Portuguese fort), which gave the whole site its name, qal`a, meaning fort. The site was the capital of the Dilmun, one of the most important ancient civilizations of the region. It contains the richest remains inventoried of this civilization, which was hitherto only known from written Sumerian references.

Of course I didn't know any of that when I went there. I was happy to go look at a 17th Century Fort thinking that it was probably tied in some way to the Crusade's period. I was pleasantly surprised in the museum when I got to see coins and burial pots and maps from before the birth of Christ...from back when Abraham was headed to the new land and into Egypt. Crazy old!



Standing between the Fort and a village that supported the Fort. I think this village was active from something like 900 B.C. thru 600 A.D. if memory serves me. You can see the ancient below me and the very modern sky line in the background. That is too cool.



Coming around to the front of the Fort. Most of these walls were either built or restored by the Portuguese in 1700. As you walk thru the Fort you can clearly see the lines of old and new. I think most of the stuff from antiquity came out of the two village sites outside of the Fort walls. Those were buried during the Portuguese activity and were not found until early 1900's.



"Cover Me! I am going in!"



A view thru an archway...looking at the Old versus the new. The ceiling of this Archway is the original wood timbers from no earlier than 1700's when the fort was restored the last time. I think the curators of the fort had sprayed some form of lacquer preservative on them now, but you can definitely see the age and wear on many roofs throughout the fort.



One of my favorite pictures of the day. We are half way up the high end of the fort and are directly under this corner tower. The tower was blocked off, but I bet the view is amazing.



Okay...remember the sign to Saudi Arabia that I wanted to avoid...well my driver insisted we head the border. Great! Then I saw why. The Bahrain-Saudi Causeway is about 28KM long...at the half way point is the Border Crossing. Each side of the border has an Observation Tower. This is the view looking back towards Bahrain.



Here is a view of the causeway from Space. Bahrain is on the right. The middle island is where I took these photos. Cool. Wikipedia says it took from 1968 to 1986 and ~$1.6 billion USD to complete the causeway.



Looking towards the Border crossing complex and the Saudi side. I am in an exact duplicate of the tower you see in this picture.



A long day already. Headed back to my hotel. It was only about 8 blocks from the Bahrain Grand Mosque. If you read about the Kuwaiti Grand Mosque, to give you an idea, the Mosque in Bahrain only holds 7k people vs the 10k in Kuwait. BUT, it's claim to fame is its dome. It is the largest Fiberglass dome in the world.



Finally to the hotel. This is a 4 star Best Western. When I saw my reservations for the Best Western, you can only imagine the images I had. This place was very nice AND it held a Country Western Bar & Grill with some very good South Western USA food. I ate an awesome grilled, cubed beef sandwich for lunch and a bowl of excellent Chili for dinner.



Yes...my room. Very modern and clean room. The view was basically looking into a low income apartment tower about 20 feet away...that was about the only down side. I called home that afternoon and was to call back at 9pm to talk to the girls...but Dad didn't make it. I think I looked at the clock the last time around 8:30pm thinking I wish I could call cause I was tired. Next thing you know, it is somewhere around 4-4:30am and I am wide awake. Slept like a baby! I spent the whole next day at the hotel working and waiting for my passport and visa to come back from the Embassy. I left for the airport at 4pm and was back in my aprartment around 9pm. Cool trip.