Happy Hijri New Year! and a visit to the Rainbow Sheikh

November 5th was the Hijri New Year, which is the first day of the Islamic calendar. As I've shared before, many of the Islamic holidays are based on the moon cycle so they aren't fixed dates on the calendar. This year, new year's day was November 5th.

I asked my Emirati acquaintances how the new year is celebrated by Muslims here in UAE and got only a shrug - doesn't seem to be that big a deal. But, it did mean a day off work so everyone was happy about that. What's most amusing to me is that the 5th fell on a Tuesday this year, which is in the middle of the week. So, the government declared the holiday from work for November 3rd giving us all a three day holiday weekend. Who am I to complain? :)

So, did the Stolls jump on a flight to somewhere exotic? Sadly no - this time we stayed closer to home and explored a bit of our own back yard. We visited the Emirates National Auto Museum!

This museum is actually the private car collection of HH Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan and consists of around 200 cars - everything you can imagine. Here are a few highlights:

Sheikh Hamad is know as the Rainbow Sheikh (no, not because he's gay - that would never be admitted in public here) but because he owns a fleet of rainbow colored Mercedes!

We couldn't even figure out what this was - the seats look too small for anyone but children.

I don't think this behemoth runs as there is a set of stairs going up into the cab (sadly blocked off when we were there). Here's Brian kicking the tires to show just how monstrous the thing is.  Why? As one of my recent taxi drivers said to me, "too much money".

Buenos Aires: Botanical Garden

My last post of our Buenos Aires adventure is a tour of a beautiful botanical garden we walked through on an equally beautiful day in BA. Enjoy!

 Didn't see very many cats in BA - LOTS of dogs, but not too many cats so had to grab a photo of this one

Buenos Aires: Palacio Barolo

One of our favorite adventures in Buenos Aires (wait, do I say favorite on every post?) was the Palacio Barolo night tour.  The Palacio Barolo is a gorgeous office building with a lighthouse on the top and an interesting history.

(Copied from Wikipedia)
Italian architect Mario Palanti was commissioned to design the building by the empresario Luis Barolo, an Italian immigrant who had arrived in Argentina in 1890 and had made a fortune in knitted fabrics. The Palacio Barolo was designed in accordance with the cosmology of Dante's Divine Comedy, motivated by the architect's admiration for Dante and his work. There are 22 floors, divided into three "sections". The basement and ground floor represent hell, floors 1-14 are the purgatory, and 15-22 represent heaven. The building is 100 meters (328 feet) tall, one meter for each canto of the Divine Comedy. The lighthouse at the top of the building can be seen all the way in Montevideo, Uruguay where there is a similar twin building built by the same architect. When completed in 1923 it was the tallest building, not only in the city, but also in the whole of South America. It remained the city's tallest building until 1935.

The tour took us through the various floors with a narration on how the building aligns to Dante's Divine Comedy. We ended up in the lighthouse with some amazing views of the city and even got to sit in the light tower itself as the guide turned on the searchlight for us. Pretty fun experience. Here are some of the photos.

 A view of the lobby (also considered 'hell').

A view from purgatory down into hell.

Some beautiful accents throughout the building. This is supposed to look like a dragon head on and just ornate scroll work from the sides.

A gorgeous view from the lighthouse. The moon was in almost the perfect spot too.

Can you see Evita on the side of the this building?

Even the staircases were beautiful - and to think this is 'just an office building'.

This is off one of the patios (maybe around the 12th floor or so?) It's a huge patio area and this is looking back at the building. There's some significance to the green as well, but I can't remember anymore what it was. A cool view that's for sure.

Our camera has this amazing night shot setting, which is the only reason this photo turned out at all.

Buenos Aires: City Tour

Another highlight of our trip was a city tour. But not just any city tour, this one was in a vintage car!

We stumbled across the tour unexpectedly one afternoon and thought it would be a more interesting ride than the traditional big bus.  And we were right.

Cafe Tortoni is one of the oldest coffee shops in the city. We had breakfast there and it was awesome! The waiters are all in their 50s or 60s and have been working there forever. Not always the most friendly, but very knowledgeable and efficient. So different from the very young, unknowledgeable and inexperienced servers we're used to in Abu Dhabi.

We took in a lot of the architecture.  Buenos Aires was heavily influenced by Spanish, French and Italian and you can see all three in this picture. Can you tell the difference? 

The Congresso.

The oldest and certainly most ornate mosque in Buenos Aires.

Open air tour - a little chilly as the sun went down, but worth it. We also felt a bit like celebrities as people on the street waved and took pictures of the car. What a hoot!

This area is called La Boca and is said to be where tango first started. Did you know that tango was originally a dance performed by two men? It was how the dock workers entertained themselves in the evenings. Very colorful place.

Another view of La Boca.

Buenos Aires: Recoletta Cemetery

I know, I've been terrible at keeping up and now I'm a vacation behind again. Such a rough life I lead! :)

To continue our Buenos Aires adventure, we spent an hour or so wandering around the Recoletta Cemetery, which was in walking distance from our apartment. Why on earth would we want to spend time in a cemetery, you ask?  You'll see ...

Recoletta Cemetery is where the rich families built their mausoleums for the dead. No burials here, but instead elaborate crypts that are somehow beautiful if you don't think too carefully about what they contain.

As we wandered through, we found a huge ladder so I decided to climb up and see what things look like from the top ... not quite as pretty.

Meanwhile, these yahoos were supposed to be holding the ladder!

They variety of the styles, size and complexity is amazing. You can see in to some that have a staircase to a lower level, others that have a beautifully decorated table with photos of the deceased and others that are plain (relatively speaking).

 Nope, not a church, just one of the family crypts.

Apparently, angels wept when this guy passed on.

This was one of the older in the cemetery - such a contrast.