Dubai, UAE - January 19-22, 2017 Eric & Helen's

مرحبا (hello) from Dubai, United Arab Emirates

January 2017

Helen & Eric's place

It's the purple country - the red dot above Abu Dhabi

Dinner out on a beautiful outdoor patio at a Japanese restaurant on our first night in town

Craig is so irresistible that Eric wanted to kiss him! heehee Check out Eric, the "local" wearing a sweater and it's 22 C.

One of the pool areas in their beautiful apartment complex

The apartment complex we were staying in

Their beautiful apartment complex

One of the main things in Dubai now is "The Burj Khalifa" which boasts being: The tallest building in the world (828 meters - 2716.5 feet tall). It is 3X as tall as the Eiffel Tower in Paris and 2X as tall as the Empire State Building in NYC. It's also considered the tallest freestanding structure in the world and has the highest number of stories in the world and highest observation deck in the world and the elevator has the longest travel distance in the world (140 floors). The elevators go at a whopping 10 meters per second and are among the fastest in the world. It takes approximately one ear-popping minute to reach the observation deck on the 124th floor! The UAE likes being the biggest and best in the world and the Burj is definitely an impressive structure in the city center.

Below is a cool dinosaur in the fancy souk by The Dubai Mall

Huge and impressive aquarium (10-million litre tank - the largest suspended aquarium in the world - of course) inside the Dubai Mall. You can walk through a tunnel to observe the fish, but it ain't cheap at $100 AED pp ($36 Cdn) for the "Researcher Experience" that includes the tunnel, underwater zoo, behind scenes tour and underwater observatory. You can also do a king croc or stingray encounter for 200 AED or shark encounter for 600 AED. FYI: Stingrays are fed at 10 am, sharks at 2 pm and crocs at 4 pm daily

The beautiful Dubai Mall is, of course, the largest mall in the world (by total area) with 1200 shops (although some of them, we noticed, are duplicated) - well, it will be again once they do the add-on to make it so.

A wonderful experience when visiting Dubai is going to the At.mosphere lounge on the 122nd floor of the Burj Khalifa... if you can afford it. Tickets are $120 Cdn pp for a window seat. You have 2 hours to enjoy the views and have drinks and/or appeys. It's called a "minimum spend" - I suppose to prevent people from going up there just for a tea and taking up a table. So, you can drink or eat the value of the admission cost (or above if you wish to pay more than $120 pp). It's a little hard to keep track of the bill without being anal about it.

The view from the lounge down into the city and the water fountain show area where you see the black in the water. Gorgeous! and so friggin high!

Not many places can make a skyscraper look small, but this building does!

Guinness World Record

Cool view from the stairs down - I'm surprised I was able to stand so close to the window without getting tingly!

Just to show you some of the prices in the "At.mosphere" Lounge - basically divide by 3 to get the Canadian prices

Some wine prices

You can't really see the view too well in this picture, but trust me, it was fantastic! Aren't we very nicely color-coordinated?!

The fountain show from inside the fancy bathroom (Tip by Helen - every 30 minutes on the hour and half hour is the fountain show, so we went to the bathroom to watch it! lol). This one is from the men's washroom - I didn't have the camera. Helen gave me a little shove as I had my head pressed up against the glass watching the show - what an evil friend! 😈Definitely got a tingly moment from that!

Just getting a picture with our yacht at the marina

The gorgeously glamorous marina area

We were treated to a fireworks show while eating dinner at the marina! Sweet! How thoughtful of our hosts to arrange fireworks for us! lol

The Burj light show - one of many pictures of the Burj

On our way to the beach we came SO close to being rear-ended by this crazy local in a jeep who expected us to run the light (but we didn't). We all heard the squealing coming up behind us, but thanks to Eric's quick reaction, he pulled ahead just in time to save us a terrible crash from behind (as the guy was coming in fast)! Phew!

 

Cute sand design in the sand at Kite Beach - yup, that's the Burj - again!

We sat and watched some races on Kite Beach

A setting on our camera - fish eye! Hilare!

And they're off!

Eric was quite into it! We even picked our machines and didn't do too badly in our predictions!

Lunch at a Lebanese/Middle Eastern restaurant along the water by the old souk where we purchased so much we needed to also buy another suitcase!! Ooops! Cooper bowls, gold ring and 2 Indian tables. Suitcase was cheap at only 40 AED.

The restaurant we had lunch at from the water taxi to the souk

Water taxi ride to souk - only 1 AED each!

The boats that bring in all the goods from places - I assume - not too far away.

Gold souk bibs of gold - who wears this stuff???

Beautiful gold bangles

The largest gold ring in the world

Just to give you some perspective on the size of the ring!

 Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the places we made purchases at - I like to do that to bring back the memories of the experience of bartering for things. Well, I shop, Craig barters.

Here's the photos of some of the items we bought:

The lamp and rug we bought in Morocco and now we have tables from India - we couldn't believe it when he said the small one was only 55 AED!

Copper bowls thanks to seeing Francine also bring them back and then Shirly.

Back to the fountains - I think we went on our own later at night to see these.

The new Opera House

A walk along the boardwalk on our last night with these two great friends!

These photos are always good, silly fun!

And who doesn't like a swing? 😁We were on our own Sunday as Helen & Eric had to go back to work (work week is Sunday - Thursday in UAE), so we walked and shopped (grocery shopping mostly for things we can't get in Moscow).

bye bye Burj 🙋

Dubai... a vibrant, rich, glamorous city with many contrasts, lots of shopping (although expensive) and many great places to eat and hang out. 

It was a fantastic (although too short of a) visit with Helen & Eric - our good friends who used to live in the apartment beside us here in Moscow. We miss you guys, but are happy that you are on this amazing new adventure in Dubai! It was so wonderful to see you both and spend some time with you. You're great hosts who showed us a terrific time in your glamorous city. We thank you so much! Of course, we missed seeing the big guy as he was such a big part of you and a part of us from your Moscow days. Hugs!

At the airport on the way home I was treated to a "security check" after beeping through the scanner (with absolutely nothing in my pockets, no belt, nothing). I was taken into a private room (with a woman officer) to be swabbed down. Thankfully I was given back my boarding pass and allowed to proceed to the gate!
The flight home was long because we had screaming and stinky (seriously, they were poopy-stinky) children all around us and it was nearly 6 hours from airport to airport as we came back home to a snow storm. We arrived home a little exhausted at 11 pm (we left the apartment in Dubai at 1 pm Moscow time - so their door to ours was a 10 hour journey for a long weekend). Now, we're back in Moscow until our next adventure.