There's a reason I haven't been blogging much these last few months - or rather, lots of reasons. Terry and I have been busy travelling, mainly through the Middle East - to Syria, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Lebanon - on commissions for a number of magazines, and squeezing in some assignments at 'home' in the UAE in between. We continued to do a lot of writing for in-flight magazines, especially Gulf Air's Gulf Life and Jazeera Airways' J Magazine (as I told you last time I wrote one of these updates in October), mainly because the editors are so easy to work with, and the magazines are fun. In Gulf Life's November Heritage issue, we had a piece on Doha's stupendous Museum of Islamic Arts, and in the latest edition, December's Food issue, we've got a feature on our experience behind-the-scenes with Michelin-starred chef Pierre Gagnaire in his kitchen at Reflets, Dubai (which I blogged about here), and small pieces on Jordan's cupcake king and owner of Sugar Daddy, Fadi Jaber, Amman's heavenly mussabaha, hommous, foul and falafal place, Hashem, Kuwait's best burger joint, Slider Station (pictured), and Dubai's colossal sweet shop, Candylicious. In December's issue of J Magazine, we've got a feature on Kuwait's fabulous four women politicians and Aleppo's food biz family and their matriarch Dalal Touma, the woman behind one of the city's best restaurants, Zomorod. You'll also find Terry's lush images illustrating our stories and lots of our reviews of restaurants, cafes and shops in the magazine's Destination Guide. One of my reviews went up on i-escape, on Kangaroo Island's Southern Ocean Lodge (and you'll see a lot more of my reviews soon on the site on properties in Australia and Syria), while our review of Doha's Four Seasons hotel went up on Travel Intelligence. We've got a lot more pieces coming out in early 2010, everywhere from Asia's Connect to the Ritz Carlton magazine, and I'll let you know about those as they appear.

I've been silent for some time, I know. We've been on the road again in the Middle East on commissions for a few in-flight and travel magazines, and our pace has been hectic to say the least - from hiking and camping at Wadi Rum to floating and spa-ing at the Dead Sea, we've done it all these last 5-6 weeks. I've barely had time - or an internet connection - to blog or tweet, but Twitter has been far easier to update, so if you can't find me here, you can come and check in on what we're doing there: www.twitter.com/laradunston. We're leaving buzzing Beirut tonight and heading back to Dubai so I'll update you all from there. In the meantime, an image from Wadi Rum.