With Gas

As with most places outside the U.S., in the middle east you buy a bottle of water at restaurants. Normally, you get a large bottle or two for the table. You can get everything from cheap, plastic bottled water up to the expensive Italian water in a fun glass bottle.

The common question if you order water is "sparking or still?" to which my dad would reply "with gas". Dad loves carbonated water and claims he picked up the saying "with gas" when we were in France some years ago. Every time he did this in Doha or the UAE the waiter would give him a confused look until he would smile and clarify "sparkling".

But, the point of this is...I now have a slight obsession with sparkling water. I had tried it a couple times in the past and wasn't impressed. But this past trip I started drinking some when dad would order it and now I'm hooked. Lately, instead of enjoying some sort of afternoon diet soda or coffee, I've been enjoying a can of this...

I pour it in a short cocktail glass to get the desired experience. For now I'm sticking to the pure, but might try some of the flavored if I start to get bored. Who knows, I might get really crazy and start adding a lime slice to my new drink of choice.