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

Do you ever find you can't recall that trip of a lifetime...

Well, Stephen and I have taken several trips in the past few years. Several trips involved watching volleyball - some just because...

Anyway there are those times - when I say, "Hey, do you remember that time we were driving back from Michigan and it took us 10 hours to get the last 100 miles, because the highway got washed out?" - Stephen says, "Oh yeah, that was crazy" or "what?"

Sometimes it takes a little more to get the memory juices flowing... So, we've decided to try and write stuff down as it happens and maybe it won't take so long to get the memory juices flowing.