Stephen’s turn for Friday summary.

Friday morning had us get up and get breakfast first thing. We enjoyed a nice breakfast in the courtyard right outside our room. Pastries, chicken sausage, mango and orange juice, yogurt, under the shade and a cloudless blue sky. Today’s agenda seemed not too hectic. We thought about the museum, then going to find the Bahri Bar and enjoying the view of the Burj Al Arab hotel. However that plan changed a little. We decided to find the local souks, come back for a refreshing drink at the hotel, then head to the mall and then the Bahri Bar. Of course, first thing’s first: You can’t do anything without any money. We walked about a ¼ mile down the road to exchange some money. Unfortunately you can’t exchange traveler’s checks without a passport, which we left in the room safe, and instead just converted some regular dollars. We tried to make our way to the waterfront where we would catch a water taxi called an abras and for 1 dinhar (about $0.27) we could get to the other side of the Dubai Creek and visit the souks. Walking along the waterfront we could feel the sun and heat coming, it was getting hot. We took a turn and walked down the Dubai souk, mostly textiles and tourist trinkets being sold here. Hustle and bustle of quite a few people, although since it was Friday (essentially Sunday), not all the shops were open. Something I saw that I didn’t quite understand: men holding hands. WTF!?! Evidently, Elizabeth had read in the travel guide that really good male friends can hold hands together to express their friendship. Sort of extreme in my opinion, but whatever.

There were 2 stops on our side of the waterfront that transported people to 2 spots on the opposite side. We got on, paid our due, and took the 5 minute ride over. Taxis were everywhere, many boats were strung up on the sides. When we got off, we started walking toward the direction we thought the souks were. We found quite a number of other foreign tourists walking around the area as well, and soon the pungent aroma of the spice souk found us. There were a few store fronts open, probably to accommodate the tourists that frequent the area. Many of the other shops were closed. Bags and bowls of spices, dried leaves and mushrooms, and peddlers outside every open shop speaking broken english wanting you to come in and visit their shop. What’s a tourist gonna do with a bag of spices? It was hard enough for me to identify what they were selling anyways.

The peddlers were out in force in the gold souk, numerous alleyways and store fronts devoted to selling jewelry of all kinds. I think they particularly singled out Elizabeth cause of her brightly colored shirt and whiteness of her skin. For as much as my looks don’t fit into the area, Elizabeth was even more so. Some of the peddlers were scary, they’d follow us after we’d passed their shop still asking us to come browse their wares. I was constantly putting my hand on the camera bag I had strapped around my shoulder to make sure it was still secure.

Snow in Dubai...

After our mid day break, we caught a cab to the Mall of the Emirates. What a crazy place that is – it is enormous! We ate lunch at the St. Moritz Café – at the end of Ski Dubai and watched people catch the lift and children get pulled along on sleds. We went to the Ski Pro shop, but didn’t find anything we wanted to bring back with us… we wandered around the mall for a couple of hours, I was surprised by the Marble Slab – but didn’t get any ice cream, we wanted to watch the sunset from the bar that overlooks the big sailboat hotel… so we headed to the taxi stand…. OMG! There is a story and a half in the wait for the taxi, but long line story short – we met a nice girl who had come over on a cargo plane with Shiek somethingorother’s 32 yearlings that he had purchased in Kentucky and she was going back to the states today… I’ll leave the cool cars to Stephen to describe…. It took an hour to get a cab, so we watched the sunset in line, but then we got to the parkign area for the hotel – headed off in the wrong direction (again) to find the bar… but I think that was just so we could give the people at the bar for sunset time to leave… Once we got headed in the right direction, we located the bar and had excellent seats to watch the colorful lights illuminate the sail of the sailboat hotel. Stephen enjoyed a mojito, and I had a non-alcoholic passionfruit, cranberry, raspberry drink – sort of an adult hawaiian punch… a little tart, but tasty still. We caught a cab ride back to the bastakhia area and came back to the hotel room and fell asleep – again, early, but I think we are almost adjusted…

We got up at 7:30 this morning, and it didn’t feel like it was 11:30 at night. So, off we go – gotta check-out of the hotel, find a place to store our suitcases while we visit the Dubai Museum and then catch a cab back to Abu Dhabi.

Friday=Holy Day in Dubai…..

So our one whole day in Dubai is Friday, which is like Sunday in the US – but that’s ok… just means most stuff doesn’t open til the afternoon AND the only people that are about are tourists – so the city is a little more quiet than during the week… I’ll leave the jewelry girl and barter boy for Stephen to tell – but the requirements of the noon day prayer was surprising. The store had to close or the vendor was going to be fined 10,000 Dirhma. Anyway, we were up at’em early (like Stephen said in the last blog) but it was not an entirely smooth getting going – we went off to convert American dollars into Dubai dirhma, and thankfully the place was open early on Friday (not late though… we tried to go back later and they were no longer open). Then we were trying to get to the souks (open air markets), and we walked in the general direction that we thought we wanted to go, but we ran into a Hindu temple – which was not where we were trying to get to, so we completed a loop around the mosque that was the primary structure in the neighborhood and back tracked toward the hotel room… At this point I realized that I had not put on sun screen and the sun was HOT! So we stopped by the room so that I could keep from becoming a lobster just walking around the streets!

So, thankfully, protected from the sun, we set out toward the water taxies again (abra)… Seems like walking to the water front shouldn’t be that challenging, but all the very small alleyways – and dead ends and sudden turns, it is surprising how hard it is to get where you want to go… We found the creek and the walked along it until we came to some polymer (sand filled) jersey barriers with 8 food plywood barricade along the creekwalk with a 1 person pass through area. I was a little hesitant to believe that the gap in the plywood was an invitation to pass, but apparently it was just a way to keep motor vehicles from the walk… It passed in front of the very large mosque – which had several grass lawn areas. I can’t imagine how much trouble it is to get grass to grow here… There are many flower beds with tropical foliage, or petunias, aloe – and irrigation tubes, the only flower bed that had foliage growing over the irrigation tubing was full of MINT – it is a weed even in the middle east… Back to the creek walk – we found a souk on the side of the creek that we are on, but it was mostly closed, so we got on the abra and went across the street to the diera area of Dubai – where the Gold Souk and Spice Souk are located… The Spice souk had shops on both sides of a narrow alley with bags full of spices, flowers, nuts. The alley was barely 5 feet wide and there were spices in the alley spilling out of the shops along with the vendors… It was rather crazy, so we continued on to attempt to find the Gold Souk. There was a large sign that said – “Dubai, The Gold City”, but it was on the other side of the street, so we wandered around the spice souk a bit longer… Then after we had circled all the way around the spice souk and arrived back at where we started – we revisited the map and discovered we had gone the wrong direction… and that sign, “Dubai, The Gold City” was the entrance to the gold souk…. The gold Souk was huge – about 20 feet wide 100 yards long, with benches and men selling water in the middle and jewelry stores down both sides. There are side alleys which have some jewelry stores and also copy watches and copy hand bags – the workers of those stores stand in the middle area and work to get tourists to visit their shops with promises of these copies of Louis Vutton bags or whatever – they kept trying to get my attention and I would look to Stephen to tell them, “No, thank you” We did visit one jewelry store – and like I said, I’ll leave that story for Stephen…. As noon arrived and it was time for mid-day prayers, we made our way back across the creek on the abra and went back to the hotel (that serves Starbucks in the afternoon) for an iced coffee.

Finally Stephen's Turn At Typing

Being up at 5:30 am sort of sucks, but I'm sure we'll be on schedule for sleep and awake time within the next day.

Much of what Elizabeth said is exactly what I would say. The plane ride was long, though I think it was shorter than going to Japan. Still the children on the plane were total brats. If I didn't have any self-control, I'd turn around and introduce them to the seatbelt feature. Awesome entertainment, tons of movies, tv shows, and games. Indiana Jones 4, about ½ way thru Get Smart, a kung fu movie with both Jackie Chan and Jet Li, an episode of the Simpsons. I could never get the map feature to work, the one where it shows you the status of where you plane is. Food was pretty good, dinner of buttered rice with curry chicken or something, the snack sandwich was a little weird, vegetable with curry I think. Breakfast was apple and waffles, including a dessert of arabian coffee tiramisu. Real, metal silverware, free alcohol, epic…

Once we landed I was glad to get up and walk around. Even though we were both pretty wiped from the long journey, it was nice knowing we didn’t have a time constraint. We got in at 8am, just have to make our way to Dubai via free airline shuttle. Exchanged some money, $60 translated into 216 dirhams, which I guess works out to about 3.6 dirhams per dollar. The bus ride took 1.5 hours, we got to Dubai around 10am. Along the way we saw much of the landscape, and all I could think about was the amazing contrast of the region. As we flew into Abu Dhabi, we passed many beaches, waterfront, and amazingly blue waters. On the bus ride, it was a flat landscape, brown and hazy. Aside from all the foliage, trees, and plants that had no earthly reason to be there, it was fairly desolate. The contrasting part that I am talking about is that for as much barren land there is, there is some sort of construction or building going on. I swear, all the people must either be employed to work for the airlines, or in construction. I also thought it strange that much of the plants/trees looked like they were recently planted, workers were laying out the plants and irrigation hoses. Perhaps it’s a yearly thing they have to do, maybe it all dies after the summer?

Dubai is amazing. It’s different from a city such as New York in that there is nothing surrounding it’s downtown area. Approaching from the highway, we went directly into a multitude of high rise buildings, whereas New York you would travel through the outer suburbs first. Dubai, being much more on the forefront of new buildings, showcased many more futuristic style buildings than New York. Another amazing contrast is that within these high rises you’ll see some old arabian style buildings and mosques.

The Orient Guest House is where we stayed, hidden in the Bastikiya quarter along the Dubai Creek. It’s within walking distance of the Dubai museum, the waterfront, some open air shopping markets called souks. Of course, the first thing we did when we got checked into our room was take a nice 5-hour long nap. The Guesthouse is quite different from your standard Marriot hotel. I wouldn’t say “roughing” it, but it’s definitely a nice change of pace. The room was quite large and a number of rooms were located right off the main lobby area which served at the eating area. To experience a unique old-world feeling I highly recommend staying here. Once we did get up, we were off to find dinner and perhaps do a little sightseeing. The first restaurant we tried was Bastakiya Nights, described as arabic style food. The menu had the standard tabouli, kebobs, hommous, unfortunately the waiter said they were not open for another hour, so instead we went to the Basta Café right next to the Guesthouse. It was very nice, exactly what I had envisioned we’d be doing when on this trip. An open are courtyard with a number of tables, few people, soft lighting just as the sun began to set, and we sat and ate and drink under a very nice night. I had a drink of mint and lemonade, sort of interesting. It looked like one of those healthy seaweed drinks people get from a smoothie place, and when I first started sipping it I couldn’t help but think I was drinking liquified basil. But eventually I convinced myself that it was mint and lemonade. I ate a salad with cucumbers, tomatoes, mangoes, and barbeque-flavored chicken. Elizabeth ate what was essentially a baked potatoe smothered with honey-mustard chicken and a side salad. Both were very good. Of course as you may have guessed, our plan to go sightseeing was cut short when we got back to the room trying to figure out what to do next. We were too tired to go out again and just went to sleep.

Random thoughts...Where did all this wood come from?

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All the doors are wood - there seem to be 2x4 thresholds on EVERY door - the ceiling is wood planks that are about a foot wide with 4x8 beams (maybe they are boxes)... so, where did it come from, there are no trees that are taller than 20 feet or bigger than 6 or 8" in diameter....

Things that make you go hmmm....


But you know me - I'll figure it out...stay tuned - for some later post.

The sprite that wasn't....

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....

Goodbye Dubai - Hello Oman

Good afternoon. I never changed the date on the computer, so it lets me know that it is noon back there at home... I hope the dogs are well, and the fish, and all you folks that have not been vacationing. Stephen and I have almost adjusted... It was tough not waking up at the crack of dawn with the mosques announcing over loud speakers, "Allah is great, It is better to pray than to sleep". So, we were up...

We have been keeping posts on a word document, and we will load those up tomorrow from the hotel with wifi in Oman. For now, we are at the Abu Dhabi Airport waiting for our flight in about 50 minutes to Oman. It has been great in UAE! We are looking forward to the relaxing on the beach in Oman.

Check back tomorrow... sometime in the middle of the night in the US we will be up and about in Oman and we will update the blog with all the fun and pictures from Dubai!

-Elizabeth