Why Kuwait?

As we mentioned in our last post, we like going to different places.  We have been to Bahrain probably about a dozen times, but Kuwait is only a bit further of a drive, and at least to Americans, very exotic sounding!  Also, it is another pin to put on our travel map. (That is not to say that we only traveled to Kuwait to say we have “been there”, but it is a cool additional benefit!) So the day after getting back from Al-Ahsa, we decided to take a three-night trip to Kuwait.

Driving to Kuwait

Most of our driving in Saudi Arabia is to the South to Dhahran and on to Bahrain.  This time, we got to drive North out of Bahrain.  The total drive time to the hotel (including the Border) was a little over 4 hours.  Two memorable things from our drive:

1. This was the first time driving when we truly felt isolated.  It may be because the winds had created a bit of a sand storm, or perhaps because we were driving on a Monday morning so the road was pretty empty, but this was the first time in our lives when we wouldn’t really know what to do if we had broken down.  Nothing but sand with limited phone signal.  Pretty scary feeling actually.
2. We had heard a few horror stories about the border and having to wait for an hour.  We made sure to apply for an E-visa before we went.  The whole border process took 5 minutes!

Kuwait itself had a lot of contruction on the roads, but we felt that overall, the driving was actually better than in Saudi Arabia.

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Our hotel

We wanted to do this trip on the cheap, so we decided to use about 75,000 IHG points to book the Crowne Plaza al Thuraya City.  The hotel was actually closer to the airport than the city center, but we booked based on the quality of the room rather than convenience.

This ended up working out really well.  Since we are Platinum IHG Members (and most likely because the hotel was empty on a weekday) We got a free upgrade to an Ambassador Suite.  It defintiely pays to join up for travel rewards! This made our three nights much better!

The hotel itself was quite nice. (and rather strange) It had both a Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza right next to one another.  It also had 8 restaurants on-site (which offered 30% discounts for Rewards Members.) Overall, it was a very nice choice (and basically free!)

Things to Do

We had a relaxed pace for this trip.  We tried to hit some of the child-friendly places that we knew Simon would enjoy.  Kuwait City itself is fairly spread out (and our hotel was far away) so driving was a must.  We were happy that our favorite breakfast spot, The Breakfast Club,  from Bahrain has two branches in Kuwait.

Scientific Center

One place that we knew we wanted to stop by was the Scientific Center.  This attraction has three separate parts: Discovery Place, the Aquarium, and an IMAX theater.  There were no English language shows at the IMAX theater while we were there, so we were only able to go to the other two.

The Discovery Place is sort of like a Hands-on museum.  There were cool attractions with bubbles and other simple science experiements.  The Aquarium was quite well done with a suprising number of tanks.  Strangely, it must have been Space month or something going on while we were there so all over the aquarium there were random facts about space.

Here is a tank of sea-horses next to a random fact about the types of food the astronauts eat!

We also got a cool Kuwait coffee mug from the Starbucks there!  We aren’t big collectors but still pretty cool!

Kuwait Towers

Kuwait Towers is so iconic, we had to go up to the observation deck.  Built in 1979 as the last in a series of water towers, they also house a restaurant and observation deck.  The views are quite stunning; however, the outside glass could do with a bit of cleaning to better see out of.  Lindsey was unaware that the obersvation deck rotated 360 degrees!

Kuwait Zoo

We did spend a few hours at the Kuwait Zoo.  I think that we went in expecting a non-Western horror show or tightly-cramped cages.  We came away pleasantly surprised.  This doesn’t really compare to any zoo in North America and Europe, but it seemed like the animals were taken care of and the space provided pretty ample.

We have come to realize that Simon is not the biggest fan of zoos (despite our desire for him to like animals).  He did get a kick out of the big boa constrictor but the rest was underwhelming for him.

The Avenues Mall

We aren’t big shoppers, but we did decide to spend an afternoon at one of the largest malls in the Middle East, The Avenues Mall.  This place is absolutely ridiculous! I don’t think we saw half of it.  It has a huge souq area, an entire indoor ‘street’ of shopping and different districts (one that is supposed to look like SoHo).  It makes sense for the desire to build large indoor malls considering the temperatures there during the summer.

Overall Impressions

We didn’t really have many expectations going into the trip. Since we put it together a bit last minute, we probably didn’t plan it out as well as we should.  Overall, we quite enjoyed our time in Kuwait.  It was clean and there were quite a few things to do for kids.  I could see us going again to hit some of the things that we missed this time. (Although it probably won’t be a regular trek like Bahrain because of driving distance)

This also ends our trekking for a bit.  We are expecting our second child in the next month so we will have to hit ‘pause’ on trips while we deal with passports and all those other things.  We may go over to Bahrain for the day to see Frozen 2 but we will have to see!