Recapitulation:

On March 8th, I decided not to take an organized tour in Kuwait, but rather to take the shuttle into town, and I had thought to walk around and look at the sights. HOWEVER, it turned out to be a 4 hour free sightseeing trip, because the driver apparently was brand new to Kuwait (he appeared to be Indian, and a very pleasant fellow, but totally unprepared for the job he was given: namely to drive a shuttle bus to the local Souk). The result was that he drove and drove, and drove some more, but we NEVER got to the Souk, and in the end, he had great difficulty trying to find his way back to the port (and ship). Most of the passengers eventually started to panic; everyone tried to tell him what to do, and eventually mayn people got off the bus, so he couldn’t go anywhere because the passengers didn’t get back on. They had seen a street sign that said WC in big letters, and (incorrectly) assumed it would be a toilet. The poor driver apparently didn’t understand English, nor Kuwaiti, and so all the telephone directions he was getting were useless. Eventually, everyone got back into the bus, and in a final effort, he got to a sign that was marked for the port, and when the ship came in sight, everyone cheered….and then went to complain about the experience as soon as they got onto the ship. However, I viewed it entirely in a different fashion: we had a 4 hour free sightseeing trip, after all!
Kuewait is very clean, very modern, and shows very few remainders of the war with Iraq (viz. one such picture).