Iraq

Wow, what a day! Finally after many, many adventures with Air France strikes (they really are a crap airline!) and snow we finally made it to Iraq!

I’m in Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, and have therefore naturally spent the day ice-skating! Oh yes, the zillion year old citadel was interesting, the museums were, well actually they were quite dull, the souks were, well like souks anywhere else in the Middle East and so I went to the Family Mall, a huge shopping complex with everything you’d expect to find in Iraq – coffee shops, wireless internet, Mango, Adidas and other chain shops, a fun fair complete with roller coasters and big wheels and a 5D cinema (that’s 3D plus movement and water spraying over you) where I watched a ‘horror’ movie and a 9D cinema – though I have no real idea what the other 4D’s are, an amusement arcade full of Iraqi children playing shoot, kill, death computer games, a large train chugging children about and, of course, an ice-skating rink. Now if only all shopping malls were such fun

Tomorrow I scoot eastwards to Sulamaniya for a day or two before returning to Erbil for a couple more days.