The flight over was very Looooooong... there must have been half a dozen children under the age of 6 on the flight, and we seemed to have 2 or 3 behind us giggling, screaming and kicking our chairs, BUT other than that it was a great flight! very little turbulance, and tasty food... except that I asked for a sprite every time the flight attendant went past and was never able to determine how to get a sprite - they were only providing the plastic pre-packaged water...
There were two cameras that you could watch on the screen in front of you - one looking forward one looking down - looking down seemed like a cool thing, except it was a stationary camera and at 300 mph the ground is pretty much a blur.
The sun came up just as we reached Dubai - I saw the palm tree development. Google earth doesn't do it justice, it is HUGE, and Dubai is sort of sureal - all these huge buildings on the coast, then it is just sand dunes for elevation as you move away from the city...
We landed at Abu Dhabi, and the predominent feature in the distance was cranes - dozens of cranes, we couldn't see the buildings they were working on due to the haze, but the red cranes stood apart from the sandy haze.
The airport had several planes, 737 size, parked on the tarmac with stairs for people to exit down - I wonder if that is how we are going to get on the plane to get to Muscat. Anyway, we continued to the terminal - that looked like a little bulb (Stephen's comment was a bulb of garlic...)... Who knew that bulbs of garlic had blue/green stained glass funnels in the center - It was fairly crazy in the two story bulb of garlic - lots of people, restaurants, stuff... but very little direction on how to get to the official location of imigration, but we found it.... Just in front of Baggage Claim - and we stood there while they asked only where we had come from - and the camera behind the desk drew boxes around our face - or any other face that it captured sufficiently to perform it's recognition routine on....
Anyway - FINALLY - on the ground, with our bags, we were given directions to the bus to Dubai - got to the first floor - go left, go left, and you will see a big bus near the car park. We found our way there too, the last two on the bus - and rode the hour from Abu Dhabi to Dubai... Finally in peace and quiet, I slept with my head on the laptop bag that didn't fit anywhere else but on my lap. When I would wake up and look out the window - there was always a mosque with the large towers that the daily prayers are broadcast. I woke up just in time to see the edge of dubai - and then I stayed awake to see the sailboat hotel go by and many other large buildings with 20 story realtor advertisements to rent space in them... There are so many unfinished buildings that are in progress it is unbelievable - we went past the site of the soon to come Six Flags and Legoland - and the Atlantis hotel with its waterpark is already finished... We went all the way past all the buildings, I began to wonder if we were on the wrong bus, but finally it got off the highway and pulled in the Etihad office location and we all got off the bus and grabbed our luggage and set about finding a taxi to our hotel.
The hotel is great - Orient guest House - right in the "Old Dubai" I will have to get some pictures of the alleys and general area, it is very cool - but across the street is a huge shopping complex that we are going to visit today. Anyway, all the doors in the room are puzzles, you have to get all the pieces just right to get them to close. We checked in at about 11:00 - and then decided to do the cardinal no-no - we took a couple hour nap... zzzz.... zzzz.... at 4:30 we got up and got ready to go out and about - get our bearings and find food... of course we were too late for lunch and too early for dinner - so we ended up at an art cafe. I had a baked potato with honey mustard chicken, dates, raisins, and pine nuts. It reminded me that in Barcelona Mother and I had also had french fries at our first tapas meal... Potatoes are a good way to ease into foreign food - today I will be more adventerous. At sunset, the mosques - two of them, one about 30 seconds behind the other, broadcast the evening prayers. The sun set and dinner over, Stephen and I returned to the hotel and went back to sleep for the night.
The hotel starts serving a breakfast at 7:00 am, so we are about to go start our day in Dubai - so I am off to get ready for that - but I thought I should remember the trip here before I go off making memories again....
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