tourists

Hello, my name is Becky and I am an American living in Bahrain.


The expat blog challenge prompt for today is: "What the tourists never see in my town that they are really missing out on..."


I'll have to do the whole island because it is pretty small. When taking a new friend around, I consulted the 100 Things to Do in Bahrain. It was pretty comprehensive since Bahrain is tiny, but some favorites of mine tourists might not get to are the Al Khamis mosque- the oldest in Bahrain, starting from the late 700s AD- pretty amazing. I also love the King Mounds- huge burial mounds in A' Ali with modern buildings springing up next to them. There are several neat pottery places there- which some more adventurous tourists go. I love walking around Arad Bay, a park near the airport with a neat walking path around a bay with some mangroves and a flock of flamingos and herons that stops in. The archeological sites are incredible and not often visited- like the Barbar Temple, which was dedicated to Enki. So ancient!


The other things that come to mind are driving through the villages. We've been in poor neighborhoods, areas where they were selling live animals for slaughter, driven down impossibly narrow streets, afraid we couldn't get out. And it is foolish to look for trouble, but just living everyday life, we've ended up in black flag neighborhoods with graffiti and road blocks made of overturned dumpsters, bricks and old palm tree trunks, and some tire fires.