So, while I had my head turned, Al Jazira fired its coach for being too harsh or too lenient or perhaps too Belgian, Baniyas owned up to the fact that it owed significant chunks of money to a couple of players, and David O’Leary, the Irishman who coached in Dubai last season, is going to […]

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One last look back on villages in southern France as we made the long journey back to Abu Dhabi … On our last day of exploring the countryside, we went through the tiny town of Blomac, and found it wanting … and then we fought through the traffic that seems to girdle the roads around […]

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We reached the hotel in Barcelona at 5 p.m., after a four-hour journey from southern France. With air travel back to Abu Dhabi in the morning. What to do in, say, six hours in one of Europe’s most interesting cities? Simple: La Rambla, tapas and sangria.

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Six full days in the Languedoc. Double figures in poking around the insides of homes for sale. A second look at one. Dozens of rides covering hours of driving over the back roads of the Aude and Herault departements. Zipping through at least 100 towns and villages. Nothing we want to buy. Wait. I take […]

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  Our tireless French real estate agent had one more idea. A place that had “just come on the market” … located in the village of Autignac, which is a fairly charming village. So we said yes. We would have a look at it. We didn’t know we were about to enter the sprawling home […]

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  The signs began appearing a few days ago. A garish rendering of a clown with the time and days that Cirque de France would be performing right here in major, metropolitan Castlenau-de-Guers (pop. 1,000). I haven’t been to a circus for a very long time. Since I was old enough to be creeped out […]

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Day 2 of the search. And even after having been through this in 2010, I clearly did not remember how punishing this could be. Five hours of house-hunting dulls the powers of observation and analysis. But it’s the four hours of driving that takes a toll, even through relentlessly scenic southern France. This is nothing […]

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The search resumes. We are in the south of France looking for a home to buy/retire to/invest in, and we crisscrossed the countryside while looking for a suitable place. Even within a few hours of completing what was a sort of race against exhaustion, it became difficult to remember what was what. This is what […]

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Dog bites man. We have time off and have gone to France. That never happens. We are back for another bite of the “south of France” apple. In the fall of 2010, we reconnoitered this part of the Languedoc north and west of Beziers/Narbonne, north and east of  Carcassonne. And liked it. A lot. (Here […]

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The women’s and men’s tennis tours come through Dubai in consecutive weeks this time of year, tournaments that each go under the name of “Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships,” though they run consecutively and not concurrently … and it’s a pretty big deal. Odd thing about the events this year? Two months ago, the women’s […]

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