Place Vendôme Mall

This afternoon we headed to Lusail to visit the Place Vendôme Mall, which is based off of French architecture:

Benjamin had slept over at his friend G's house, so G's family met us at the mall and we spent some time exploring together. We took the metro to Lusail and then took the tram to the Vendôme, which felt like a bit of an adventure on our part since we hadn't (a) gone that far on the metro or (b) used the tram lines yet.

We wound up at the Eiffel entrance, which spit us into the mall by things like H&M and The LEGO store—places we could somewhat afford. 

Our friends drove to the mall and parked off Luxury Boulevard and wound of at the Faubourg entrance, which greeted them with stores like Louis Vuitton and things of that ilk—places we could never afford. 

When I said we were at the LEGO store, they said they'd come find us. 

"Okay," I messaged back. "We just got directions to Luis Vuitton but the Lego store is probably more interesting for the kids..."

"Yes. There was some enthusiasm for the LEGO store expressed here."

And, indeed, the LEGO store was a huge hit!

Andrew let the kids each pick out a little set of LEGO to buy in part because we don't have many toys here at the moment and in part because LEGO is one of his weaknesses. I threw a pack of Play-doh in the grocery cart the other day for the same reason (because we don't have many toys here, not because Play-doh is a weakness of mine...it may in fact be a nemesis of mine, but it does keep the children entertained...even if it does make a bit of a mess). 

Such lucky kids! 

Andrew also wanted to check out the Apple (-adjacent) store to see if they might do computer repairs (since Miriam's computer is unfortunately on the fritz). There's an Apple (-adjacent) store in our mall, but they don't do repairs. Luckily the one in the Vendôme said they do...so we might be heading back there to put Miriam's laptop in the Apple hospital. 

He also wanted to check out a megastore called Virgin to look at pianos since we're still trying to figure out how to get a piano. It was good to look at the models they had (and to see the prices, which made me feel better about the prices listed on FB marketplace). 

By this time people were hungry, so we hit up the food court:

And then headed out to see the "Dancing Fountains," which I'm not sure that I knew about before, but perhaps Andrew did because he really wanted to be there for sunset (we went too early for that, however, so we'll have to go back to catch the show at night when you can see the lights and the water). There are shows on the hour, every hour between 10 am and midnight.

About half our crew was still eating and ended up missing the first show we were in time to catch, so we stayed around chatting in the food court for another hour in order to watch the next show as well. Hanging out in the food court was actually very pleasant:

Vendôme has several (13) skylight domes throughout the mall that give it a rather outdoors-but-inside vibe. 

I neglected to take any pictures of the fountains, though I did take some video. I'm sure YouTube won't allow the video to go online, though, because there's music in the background, so enjoy this screen grab:

There's a little canal that runs around, with boats that can be rented, though we didn't see anyone on the boats today.

Here are some myna birds perched on the railing:

After walking to the parking garage to retrieve Benjamin's backpack, we made our way through the mall to the metro and started our journey back to the hotel. Here's a picture of Alexander standing in front of the store Alexander McQueen (where you can buy a pair of sneakers for $800 or a dress for $4000...it's one of many stores that I had never heard of before and will probably never enter):

But it was a lovely mall to wander around in and the kids were very excited about their LEGO purchases. 

On our way to the tram, we walked a little ways to admire Katara Towers...

Phoebe was more interested in the ferris wheel she could see in the distance:

We also saw another big "Hala Summer" character in the distance and halfway thought about trying to walk to it...but we'd already walked about 5 miles by that point in the day...and it was still pretty hot out...so we decided it wasn't worth it.

Phoebe was feeling especially worn out from our excursion—she did a whole lot of walking (but, to be fair, also got carried a fair bit as well).

She just wanted to get home and put together her LEGO set (the "Fancy Restaurant with Bingo [from Bluey]" set).

So that's what we did, finishing up the day with calls with Rachel and Grandpa (and just right now I had a brief moment where I thought it was already Sunday and I'd missed calling my mom—but it's still just Saturday).