Our 7th wedding anniversary was spent in Taiz. We have come to Taiz for a few days in order to renew our residence visas and obtain exit/re-entry visas before our trip to England.
Crazy Old City
In the morning we went into town to visit the old city- a part of town which is many hundreds of years old. It is supposed to be pedestrianised, but that doesn't stop all the noisy, smokey motorbikes from racing up and down. We were grateful for our double buggy which kept Isaiah safe and stopped Kira from running into the path of one of the motorbikes. Kira did very well not to get overwhelmed by all the noise and craziness there and even got given a nice silver necklace by one of the shop keepers.
Kira's free necklace
"Not our hotel!"
To celebrate our anniversary, we went for lunch at the Al Saeed hotel which used to be the Sofitel Hotel but has recently been disowned by the Sofitel company, much like the ex-Sheraton hotel in Aden. They seem to have given up trying to get Yemenis' to do things to their standards. The new Al Saeed sign has five stars on it, but we think they just decided to award themselves 5 stars. Anyway, we enjoyed ourselves- it was very relaxing to eat lunch in a quiet place with jazz music in the background. Most Yemeni restaurants are so noisy you can hardly talk to each other. Where else in the world could you have a huge lunch for a family of four in a "Five" star hotel for less than £20.
View of Taiz from the hotel
Deep questions
"What's the highlight of the last 7 years?", asked Kate while we were eating.
She has a habit of asking these deep questions which catch me off guard and expects an instant response.
"Err, we've had some very nice holidays.", was the best answer I could come up with at the time.
On reflection, I think that the highlight of the last 7 years has been embarking on this Middle Eastern adventure together with someone as wonderful and amazing as Kate. We keep each other going through the tough times and have a lot of fun meeting people and seeing places. We achieve so much more together than we could do individually.
