We arrived in Dubai on the 5th November after the 6 1/2 flight from London with Royal Brunei – a very smooth ride, good service and and good food. It felt wonderful to escape the cold weather and layers of clothes in London and to arrive into 30 odd degrees in Dubai. The 4hours time difference from London meant that I slept until nearly 11am the following day (nothing to do with the bottle of good red wine that I shared with Alan). That evening we went to a new Iranian restaurant where we enjoyed a delicious meal of hoummos, baba ghanoush, bread, fish and various meats.
Maurice and I started on our regular exercise the following day with a nice walk down to the beach in Jumeira and a swim in the beautifully refreshing and clear water. We both felt ourselves thawing out after wanting to hibernate in the cold weather.
Alan cooked us a delicious meal before flying off to Hong Kong the next morning and we went for our morning walk and swim. It is a pity that at such a lovely beach doesn’t have any cafes or a toilet block. There are a few small round changing huts that were locked when we went to look at them. It was just lucky that we were staying a few streets away from the beach. In the afternoon we went to the “Mall of the Emirates” for a look around. “Ski Dubai” is located there so that is a big crowd puller. The cafe in front of the ski area has a (fake) roaring fire in an enormous fireplace which feels out of place in Dubai.
The weather was very pleasant for our stay and after another morning swim and then rest, we ventured on the metro to the “Dubai Mall” to join the other thousands of people who gather around the mall to watch the music fountains that play every half an hour. It is an enormous mall with intersting restaurants, cafes and every conceivable shop. Shopping in Dubai would be fun with a few hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think that every brand ever invented has representation there. Having said that we did manage to buy a piece of hand luggage for a very reasonable price and “Carrefour” does have some bargains. There were 3.85 Dirhams to the AUD at the time.
We went for our morning swim and in the afternoon we caught the metro which is very reasonably priced and a very efficient service to the Dubai Marina area where we walked along the Esplanade and then explored the “Dubai Marina Mall” which was smaller than the “Mall of the Emirates” or the “Dubai Mall”. We caught a taxi (which are also very reasonably priced) to a little restaurant called “Chalet” where we had a tasty meal of fish and lamb and walked back to Alan’s house.
There is a great amount of traffic on the roads between about 3.30pm and 10pm and most drivers think they are on a formula 1 track. Even the taxis try and get you to your destination at break neck speed even if it isn’t required.
I got up early about 8.30am! and Maurice and I went for our last walk down to the beach and for a wonderful swim in the clear, calm waters.
We went to the “Mall of the Emirates” and met Patrick (who we had seen briefly in Ireland) and had lunch with him at a nice cafe called “Rich”, a fitting name for a Dubai cafe – another is called “Gold”. Patrick had a “Yorkshire Pudding sandwich – which turned out to be an enormous type of baguette and the casing was Yorkshire pudding mixture. Very unusual but he said it was delicous.
Alan came home from a three day trip to Hong Kong and we went in the evening to a very good Afghani restaurant called “Barbeque Delights” on the Esplanade in the Dubai Marina area.
Alan took us to the airport and the Emirates terminal which covers a vast area. We left Dubai on Emirates on the 12th November for our 2 hr 50min flight to Mumbai.