I woke up about an hour before landing in Abu Dhabi. Because my sleep had been pretty broken over the past 36 hours, I wasn’t feeling amazing, but I was feeling MUCH better with the worst of the food poisoning having passed. I’m a bit regretful because I was really looking forward to a long international Etihad flight prior to this trip. I’ve heard amazing things about all of the middle eastern carriers but sadly skipped the meal (which Gimpy and Muscles both enjoyed) and all of the in flight entertainment in order to sleep and recover. Small sacrifices.
We landed in Abu Dhabi and passed through customs without any incident. We found the Etihad shuttle across the street. It was apparent that we had entered the summer portion of our trip. It was only 7AM and it was already hot and muggy. I had prepared myself for the heat (as much as I could) but the humidity was unexpected. We drove for an hour until we reached the Etihad travel center in Dubai. From there we jumped on the metro to arrive a block away from our hotel the City Premiere Apartments.
We were still pretty early and ended up waiting an hour before we could check into the hotel. We booked a two bedroom apartment for the three of us and we were pleasantly surprised at how nice the unit was.
We settled down, unpacked and threw some clothes in the laundry (we had intentionally booked an apartment for the washer and dryer. It was the halfway point of our trip and we wanted a place to launder our clothes for the next half.) We popped over to the super market a block away and picked up some supplies, but more or less we rested until 3:30. At 3:30 we were picked up in an Ocean Air Travels land cruiser for a desert safari we had booked a few weeks back. We headed an hour East of Dubai into the desert to do some 4×4 Sand Dunning (“Sand Bashing” according to them). This was pretty exciting and our driver, Rafeeq was very good at handling the unexpectedness of the different peaks or false peaks of the dunes. We stopped in the middle of the desert to take some photos and also try our hand at sand boarding. Having done snowboarding before I figured it wouldn’t be all that different. I was wrong. The sand is a lot more fluid and it and inconsistent a lot harder to “carve” than in snow, every time I tried to make a turn I would catch the sand and I’d wipe out. Eventually muscles figured that it was simply best to point the board down, keep it flat and ride it all the way.
With the photo ops done and every pocket and crevice filled with desert sand from wiping out a few times, we piled back into the land cruiser and made our way to Ocean Air’s desert camp for an evening of food and dance (a single dance, as Ramadan limited the dancing to a single performance). Before entering the camp we had an opportunity to take a camel ride in the desert. One of the things we wanted to do after realizing we’d be in the desert, was ride a camel. We all took turns on two camels and snapped a few pics and videos. In the camp we were lucky that there were only two tables at the camp this evening. Normally there would be many more but because it was the month of Ramadan the interest in such an event was low. We were served some traditional Arab appetizers and entrees including Shawarmas, falafels, kebabs and grilled meats. We were then treated to a dance performance that I can only describe as a guy spinning continuously manipulating parts of his costume to form different images.
Overall it was a fun evening: Being outside, enjoying the coldish (still in the 30’s or high 20’s) desert air and having tasty Arab food. Rafeeq was skilled as a driver and also gave us some good background on some of the things we drove by in Dubai. We got back to our hotel at around 10:30, changed a load of laundry and turned in for the night. We had a relatively free day tomorrow but there were a few items we had on a list to check out.
The next morning Muscles was first to get up. He had scoped out a local Crossfit gym and made the heroic effort to wake up at 5AM in order make a 6 AM class. Neither Gimpy or I wanted to have any part of that plan so we got to sleep in until Muscles got back from his class, around 9 AM. We got washed up and made our way to the metro. Our first stop would be the Mall of the Emirates. We wanted to visit this mall because it housed an indoor ski slope. I’ve seen this slope on the net and thought it so odd to have skiing in the middle of the desert. When we arrived at the mall we also wanted to visit a Starbucks because Gimpy was looking for a Dubai Starbucks mug. We realized that the mall was PRETTY BIG and we had to spend a few extra minutes studying the floor plan to find where we wanted to go. Oddly enough the only city mug that they had available was the Abu Dhabi mug. Gimpy got one anyways. Next up was the ski slope. Its amazing how you can be in 40 degree heat and see snow indoors. It was about –1 inside the ski slope and there were children tobogganing and going down runs multiple times. As much as all of us wanted to say we skied in Dubai, we just weren’t willing to stomach the cost of playing in sub standard snow at a premium price. We simply admired from the few observation decks in the mall.
Because it was Ramadan, we were warned by the hotel staff to dress conservatively (more so for gimpy than the guys) and to not eat or drink in public. This was apparent when all of the restaurants in the mall were closed. The only thing that was available was the mall food court that was completely walled off so that those of the Muslim faith could not see non-Muslims eating while they were fasting. We decided to eat in the food court, we all got some form of comfort food from home. Gimpy got a “Panda Express” type meal, Muscles hit up Shake Shack for a burger and I eyed a Jollybee which I have heard a lot of good things about from a few Filipino friends for fried chicken and spaghetti. It was a good departure from Middle Eastern fare and we all enjoyed it.
We hopped back onto the metro and made our way North towards an older part of Dubai where Gimpy had read about street and spice markets. It took a little bit to find it but we eventually arrived. We found streets lined with scarves, tourist souvenirs and other clothing items. All the stores were manned by very aggressive salesman that would try to lure or “hook” you into their store with a scarf or other clothing item. Every now and then we did get roped in simply because the stores had very good A/c and we were dying from the heat (It was VERY HOT). Gimpy ended up bargaining a pair of pants from a dealer so we didn’t leave the area empty handed. At this point we were all pretty wiped from the heat and Muscles especially was tired from the early morning he had.
We returned to the apartment to rest and relax a little before setting out again in the evening. Muscles jumped into bed soon after we got back to catch up on some sleep. I tried to get caught up on some blog posts but ended up spending the afternoon chatting with Gimpy. I really enjoyed spending a lazy afternoon catching up with a good friend and chatting about life!
Dinner time snuck up on us quickly and we knew we wanted to make our way to the Dubai Mall area in order to catch one of the fountain shows. We jumped on the metro and made our way to the Dubai mall stop where we took an amazingly long walkway to enter the craziest mall any of us had seen! This mall was bigger than the Mall of the Emirates and had 5 levels, hundreds of restaurants, a skating rink, underwater aquarium, shark tank, merry-go-round, artistic waterfall and much more. We located 3 star bucks that we strategically tried to hit only to find that none of them had Dubai city mugs, only Abu Dhabi ones (go figure!). The three of us also decided to visit a Cheesecake factory for dinner. We had talked about comfort food at lunch and Cheesecake factory has always been a “go to” comfort food choice for me, so seeing it in the mall directory made it an easy choice. We all loaded up on the carbs with pasta but it really hit the spot. We made our way outside to catch the tail end of one of the fountain shows, and as the crowds cleared we positioned ourselves in the middle of the Dubai fountain to wait for the next show. (shows run every half hour). We caught the final show and was treated to an amazing display of music and high pressured water jets. We caught most of it on video and took pics where we could. With the festivities over we returned to our Hotel to start packing. We would transfer to Abu Dhabi tomorrow and over night there before flying onward to Cairo. There was only one thing we wanted to do while in Abu Dhabi, visit the Grand Mosque, so we were excited for tomorrow.
Galleries:
[AFG_gallery id=’10’]
[AFG_gallery id=’11’]
If you like Jollybee, and if you don’t know already, there’s one in Seattle’s Southcenter mall.
How is the metro in Dubai? Cheap and easy to ride?
The metro was extremely easy to ride, it was relatively cheap at around $8 CDN for a full day’s fare.
There is a neat element to the metro where there are woman only cars. Gimpy took advantage of the less crowded less….Sweaty cars whenever she could 🙂