On Wednesday, April 6, Kevin and I flew from Rome to Dubai. We landed around 11pm and when we got to our hotel we were starving, so we did something we never do, and ordered room service. I must say it was amazing! We both thoroughly enjoyed relaxing in our room and eating delicious food! We certainly wont make a habit out of this, but it sure is nice every once in a while.
We must have been really tired (and the blackout curtains must have been awesome) because we slept until 12:30pm on Thursday! Neither of us had ever been to Dubai, so we were a little apprehensive about exploring the city, but we conquered our fear and took a taxi to the Union Station Metro. Our hotel was in an area called Deira which was about a 30 minute metro ride from downtown Dubai. We decided to go to the Dubai Mall on our first day because it was also really close to the Burj Khalifa (the World's Tallest Building). The Dubai Mall has over 1200 shops and also includes an ice rink, an aquarium, and an indoor theme park. It was awesome! We walked around and shopped for a little while, and then at 6:00pm went outside to see the Dubai Fountain, which does a water show similar to the Bellagio water show, every 30 minutes. The Dubai Fountain is right in front of the Burj Khalifa so it was a pretty spectacular show! We went back to the hotel around 7:30pm. When we got to the metro station we couldn't find a taxi to take us to the hotel so we started walking. I anticipated this happening, so I paid very close attention to our taxi ride earlier in the day. Thanks to my attentiveness, we made it back to the hotel in one piece, without any wrong turns!
The Burj Khalifa is 160 floors high, is home to the Armani hotel, currently holds 17 World Records, and also has about 75 floors of residencies. It was pretty awesome to see!
It towers over everything!
Self-photo...always gotta have one.
So BIG!
Part of the Aquarium
The Ice Rink
This shop was awesome!
Beautiful sunset over the desert.
The Dubai Fountin
We planned to get an earlier start on Friday, but we both had a hard time falling asleep the night before, so we took some Nyquil and slept until 12:30pm again! Our first destination was the Mall of the Emirates. This Mall is not quite as big as the Dubai mall, but still pretty large compared to US Malls. The main attraction at this mall is the indoor skiing facility. If you can’t have one outside, might as well make one inside! It was crazy! The whole thing was enclosed so they can maintain the temperature and it is so cold in there you can even see it snowing in parts where the ducts are! The neat thing about this facility is that at least half of the walls are windows and people in the mall can see inside. It was about $100 (US) to rent gear and go in to ski, so we bypassed this activity, but it was still really neat to see! We ate lunch in the food court at a burger place called Shake Shack, and it was one of the best burgers Kevin and I had ever had! I sure hope they bring those out to Colorado soon! Our next destination was the Burj al Arab. This is a 7 star hotel (I am still not sure how this scale works, because the Broadmoor is at the top of the scale and only has 5 stars) located near the Palm Island – the man made island that looks like a palm tree and has cooling devices under the sand so you don’t burn your feet. We didn’t get a chance to see this island, but we were very close to it. Back on track…The Burj al Arab is not accessible to the public, so we walked over to Souk Madinat which shares a property line with the hotel. We got to do some shopping and see some awesome Arabic architecture. It was like being in the movie Aladdin! We took a taxi back to the metro station and went over to Diera City Center for some more shopping, and then went back to the hotel around 8pm. We went down to the bar for some dinner and drinks and then went to bed.
Pretty self-explanitory!
The main part of this photo is a man-made tobogan! So cool!
This is one of the very few photos we have of the "get-ups" that the arab men and women wear. You are not supposed to take photos of the women so this is as good as it gets.
This is what the indoor skiing facility looks like from the outside. This is the view from the metro system.
This is the Burj al Arab...a 7 star hotel!
A mandatory self-photo.
Inside the Souk. It was a shoppers paradise!
A camel! We only saw this one, but my guess is that there were numerous camels all over the city with all different kinds of designs.
The two of us looking over Souk Madinat. Just like Aladdin.
Overlooking the Burj al Arab.
On Saturday we went to the ship. It was a pretty quick and easy day of work and we were back at the hotel around 1pm. We napped until about 3 and then it was time to go on our Desert Safari! Our driver Farouke picked us up at the hotel at 3:15 and then we went to get 4 other people. It took us about an hour to drive out to the sand dunes where we went Dune Bashing in our Land Rover for about 30 minutes. It was an awesome roller coaster ride! On of the cars got stuck in the sand so we had a chance to get out and take some pictures while our driver, dug out the other driver. They were able to get unstuck and then we drove over to our Camp. The first thing we did at the camp was ride the camels! I seem to have a little bit of an obsession with camels and I was so excited to see them! There were only 3 camels there and they just walked in a big loop, but it was still a fun experience. You get on the camels while they are sitting and when the stand up they stick their butts up first and when they sit down they put their front legs down first, so you get quite the ride during this process! The next stop was the henna station. We paid a little extra for a bigger tattoo that lasted about 2 weeks. It was beautiful. Our last station before dinner was smoking the hookah. This was the first time I had ever smoked hookah and it was an interesting experience. The taste was ok, but I really didn’t like feeling of having smoke in my lungs! Kevin really enjoyed it, so I let him have his fun! We ate a traditional Middle Eastern dinner with hummas, beef, veggies, and pita bread and watched some fire dancing and belly dancing. Then we got back in our car and went back to the hotel. Our whole excursion was about 6 hours long and well worth the price. It was a great way to see lots of different pieces of desert culture in a very short amount of time. I am so glad we had this experience!
This was just before our Dune Bashing.
The Arabian Desert. It was surprisingly beautiful!
Just the two of us!
This is the car that was following us that got stuck! I'm glad it wasn't us!
A close up of the two of us!
I love this photo....Kevin is such a great photographer!
Camels!! So exciting!
Our camel was very calm and nice.
The view of our camp.
Getting my henna tattoo done.
Close up. She did a great job!
Kevin loved the hookah!
Another photo of the two of us. I don't feel like we have enough of these!!
On Sunday we tackled our longest flight to date – Dubai to Houston, non-stop! It was 16 hours and 30 minutes on a plane, a very long day!
