Day 1 (14th of March): well, really - day one is just a travel day... and by "just" I do mean the WHOLE day travel. I got up at my normal time (5:30ish) to get kids up and ready for school, see them out the door and continue to fight with my iPad to get movies transferred (another thing I need to work on now that I'm home - get this computer fixed....). My computer fought me tooth and nail on at EVERY turn trying to prep for this trip as well - it will NOT recognize my iPad or phone any longer... arge!So - after staying up half the night to get movies transferred to the iPad, I discovered my books were now gone. Sigh.
I gave up and moved a few books to the iPad before leaving on Wednesday... I helped Mom and Dad with the house and got some odds and ends done, however, it seemed like I was just in a hurry up and wait mode all morning. There is something to be said for working a half day just to keep your mind occupied. Ah, well, hind sight and all that jazz. so, Mom and Dad dropped me off at the shuttle at 12noon on Wednesday. And so the adventure began.
Day 2 (15th)
I had multiple flights, however for some reason when in ATL they only gave me the first leg of my trips boarding passes. I got to Washington and received the next leg, however not the third leg's boarding pass either. Weirdness. Amsterdam is an interesting place to fly through/out of as they screen you a second time when you go to the actual gate as well. Again, weirdness.
So - after about 20 hours and a 9 hour time difference I arrived at Abu Dhabi airport... went through customs, and walked the gauntlet of people... no Leslie. Hum... walked it again, dragging a very uncooperative suitcase behind me (crushed wheel was later discovered)... still no Leslie. I got to thinking we NEVER exchanged numbers, so this could be very interesting if something did come up while I was in transit :o\ ha! Nothing did... and she walked up to me when I was on my second loop and wandering to the doors outside - to see if they were at the curb instead :o) Yeah!! It was like NO time had passed and we picked right up where we left off some 12 years ago. Fun times, fun times. We sat up and chatted and caught up on life in general until the wee hours of the morning.
She and Sarah share a 2 bedroom flat there in Abu Dhabi. Sarah is a nanny for a number of families, however nanny is more of a transportation in some cases, pick kids up at nursery, transport them to the house with the house keeper you pick up as well type of situation - sounds great to me... although driving through some of the multi lane roundabouts would freak me out!
View from their flat - 14th floor. Note that there is a haze in the air and I could really feel it the first night in town... cough, cough, hack, hack... little did I know this was the best we would see it the entire time I was in country! There were two storm fronts in the area, so I didn't get the ideal weather, I got the freakish weather for the trip. Ah, well, just one more reason to go back, right?
So, Day 2 (15th - Thursday) was arrive in country and go to bed late that night
Day 3 (16th - Friday) the first day of their weekend (Friday/Saturday) and we were off to Dubai!
We stopped at two malls on the way into town - mostly to look for Elizabeth's LG Lollipop phone that I never did find. We did give it a goo try, however, along the way, we saw Krispie Kream Donuts, so I had to take a picture for Linda and family! The first mall was the
Ibn Battuta Mall
We went to the
Mall of the Emirates to see Ski Dubai and for Leslie and Company to get a hamburger at the Shake Shack - apparently the one and only place to get a "authentic" burger in country. I would compare it to Five Guys Burger and Fries. It was good... but for me, doesn't compare to Mikes Hot Dogs here in town :o)
What Ski Dubai looks like from the outside, apparently it's quite the large slope considerably higher than we could see from the windows we were peering through.
From there we went to check into the hotel. It was adjacent to the
Burj Al Khalifa The
Ramada Downtown The views were phenomenal - we could see the entire Burj Al Khalifa as well as the
Dubai Mall and fountains. Very impressive!
The living room to the two bedroom suite was:
this window along with a small balcony off to the right of the picture overlooked the fountains and if you looked up and to the left, the tower as well!
The kitchen with bar as well as a little dining nook off to the side (only two chairs as there was a full dining table in front of the bar:
Weird little bathroom shower in the 2nd bedroom. No shower curtain at all. I thought I could pull it off as there was a drain in the floor... but it was too awkward to try to "spritz" shower... I gave up and bummed Leslie's bath from that point forward!
You knew you weren't in the states anymore as there were pictures of the Sheiks all over. This is two of them on the building to the ocean side of us - basically to the west of our building.
The mall is the HUGE area behind the fountains - it is 4 stories tall and goes on for at least a mile around the outer walkways if not more!
Fountains at night and in motion!
This first evening we were schedule for a dinner cruise in the Marina area going through some of the bigger buildings of the area. Never tell these to "put your heads together" you never know what you'll get! ha!
The Atlantis hotel visible in the distance at the tip of the
Palm JumeirahCool twisted building in downtown. It's not completed yet, however it's very impressive
Yes, we even smoked the shisha - it was a grape flavor and wasn't horrible... I didn't inhale, it was hard enought to NOT smoke with multiple smokers around, however wanted to see what the fuss was about with the flavored smoke. yeah, I could leave it alone just fine :o)
Day 4 (17th Saturday) dawned with FOG and a lot of it. Something I just had not anticipated from this part of the world. Fog - desert? Doesn't seem to go hand in hand, nor does Desert and humidity, however this is the case in this particular desert, so something new learned on this trip as well. Also, some of what I see in the air may not necessarily be dust, it could just be normal haze that comes with humidity as well. Weirdness... however, after seeing the amount of dust on the patio's after a day of accumulation... I'm fairly convinced most of what we were seeing in the air was the last bit of the sand and yuck that had not settled out since the last big blow hard storm as well.
Walking over to the Khalif praying the fog would burn off before our tour time of 9:30!
figuring out what building was ours and where our room was on the 28th floor... very close to penthouse level.
Walking, chatting, catching up!
Our hotel is the 2nd from the right - it was set back a bit from the others, but still afforded a very nice view of everything. Our balcony was to the far left of the building.. very nice!
Sometimes you just need to be goofy and hold up the whole building :)
The a more "stable" way to hold... ha!
I think we were "sucking it in" for something that was going on at the window :) Just being goofy!
If you look really close - to the right of the tower in the foreground you can just make out the
Burj Al Arab - the sail shaped hotel... and I do mean look CLOSELY as it's not very visible. We did use the telescopes to show all different scenes so we could confirm what it would look like on a clear day and we were, indeed, looking in the correct direction!
Case in point - this is where the world islands are being built - we could barely see the faint outline of the lower portion from our view... however, this afforded a nicer view of what was really out there!
Fun comparison of historical of in the mid 70's to early 80's:
And today - one of the few sets of older hotels still standing amidst all the madness that is the new Dubai!
And of course, this is after leaving the restrooms... because you HAVE to pee on top of the world, right?? hahaha!
After our tour and rambling around the top of the city... we headed down and into the mall. Where we continued our tour of "in the worlds" - there a LOT of world breaking things in this area, that's for sure! Case in point - the Aquarium in the middle of the mall:
And it's "in the world" record :o)
They also have an ice skating rink in this mall as well - there are also retractable awnings above this one section for more pleasant temperatures - they can roll the roof back and let natural light/air in.
We stopped off at Bloomingdale's as well for a coffee and a cupcake as well - they teased me about my "sippy cup" lid!
Sara joined me in the sippy cup/small world with a sample of a shake along the way!
And just in case you ever wanted to know... Leslie found herself - look, she is "here"... haha!
I had called another college friend Shams the night prior and was semi stumped as I had not talked to him in 20 years. I called with a "hi, this is Donna...Ashwood... Autrey... used to be" as I had NO idea if he would know my married name - ha! Yes, it was THAT stilted. Sigh. I'm a dork. Then as he was pulling himself together as well, he basically said "Hi" and a "where are you calling from"... and was floored that I was actually IN Dubai. Wendy (His twin brother Qamar's wife) failed to tell him I was coming into town OR that she had given me his number and had told me she would give him my number as well. Talk about funny. Nice cold call after that length of time, eh? Nothing like calling someone out of the blue with an "I'm in town - want to meet up to say "Hi"?" ha! He was a good sport about it and he and his family met us at the Mall for lunch and a bit of catching up. Had he had a bit more warning, I'm sure he would have talked us in to a lot more visiting and a lot more adventures in Dubai as well. As it was we had a GREAT meal of Lebanese food and a nice three hours of visiting and catching up.
Very beautiful family - his daughters are close to our girls ages too - 11 and 15
Regretfully we had more places to go and more things to see. Our night that night was another scheduled dinner cruise on the Dubai Creek. This seems a bit redundant, however they were two distinctively different areas of the city. The marina was/is all man made and the "new" area, where the Creek is the historic and older section of town. Very different in the perspectives of what you see.
HOLY crap! I just put in three more days of details and it's GONE...
Ok, starting this on a new post...
