The UAE Capital...

For the final day of Fred and El's visit, we decided to go to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, to see how it compared.

Enjoying a nice sleep-in, we met our guide, Sameh, at 10am to head off.  Youthful, energetic and very knowledgeable, Sameh was an excellent travel companion, telling us all about the sites and UAE life in an open and genuine way.  His willingness to answer any and every question honestly and insightfully  - even those questions we never thought we could ask - added a special and enlightening dimension to the day.

The drive to Abu Dhabi takes about an hour and a half, or an hour and 10 minutes if Sameh's at the wheel. Although there is no official border, you can tell the moment you drive into the emirate because its roads become lined with trees and the colour of the road actually changes.  

Abu Dhabi's Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque was absolutely breathtaking. Envisioned and initiated by the late Sheikh bin Sultan Al Nayhan, the mosque is designed to blend the beauty of faith with the marvels of modern architecture and art.  

To head inside the mosque, El and Beth put on abayas to meet the stricter new dress code that was implemented after a visit by Rihanna that didn't unfold quite as everyone had hoped.

The mosque was opened in 2007 and is the largest mosque in the UAE and 8th largest in the world.  The inner courtyard - made of Italian white marble to keep it cool on even the hottest of days - can hold up to 60,000 people during prayer time.  The interior of the mosque also boasts the largest single piece of carpet and the biggest chandelier (weighing 12 tonnes) in the world.

Although the mosque holds many records,  it is the overall look of the mosque that leaves the most lasting impression.  With light coloured walls and floral patterned decor, the mosque managed to beautifully walk a fine line of feeling grand and regal but whimsical and inviting at the same time. 

Although we will never know the true cost it took to build the mosque (rumours fluctuate between 700 million to 3 billion), the finished building is a truly lasting legacy.

After an eventful morning at the mosque, we headed over to the Emirates Palace Hotel for lunch at Mezzaluna Restaurant. Luckily we had made a reservation as the hotel was only allowing scheduled guests to enter the premises because of the international film festival being hosted there.

The Emirates Palace Hotel was originally built as a palace for the Sheikh but, after the Sheikh's death, the palace was converted into a hotel as the Sheikh's son felt too wistful to stay there and moved instead to another palace.  At a cost of approximately 3 billion to build, the Emirates Palace Hotel is one of the most expensive hotels of all time.

Naturally, the hotel did not disappoint, offering a majestic and gorgeous interior...and the first "gold bar" ATM in existence.  We soaked it all in and we enjoyed a leisurely lunch in the patio outside.  

After a drive around town and a quick pop in to Ferrari world, an enormous theme park, we headed back to Dubai feeling like we had gotten a great sense of the exceptional UAE capital.

A trip to the Creek

Not all parts of Dubai are as new and grand as the Palm, marina and financial districts so we headed to the Creek/Deira area to see how Dubai used to look as it was starting to develop.

Dubai hosts a brilliant Cultural Centre that shows visitors what homes and life looked like historically (in the 1960s!) and then offers a traditional brunch paired with a lengthy conversation about life, religion and culture in Dubai.  During our walk around the Cultural Centre's "old town", we learned about the way they used tall towers to create natural air conditioning and narrow streets to allow the buildings to create awnings and sun protection.  Also interesting was how they only had windows on one side of the house to prevent windows in abutting houses looking directly into each other.  

Over brunch, our discussions about Arabic coffee, the local dress, family relationships and the daily lives of the Emirate people proved eye opening and interesting and we all certainly left with new information and insights.

After an educational morning, we wandered down to the water and paid our 1 AED (approx 33 cents) to take a small dhou boat across the Creek. The buildings by the Creek are much smaller and more understated than the other parts of town but the people roaming the streets are far more numerous.  Streets are abuzz with people wandering about, pushing trolleys of inventory for the nearby shops and merchandise to be loaded onto the shipping dhou boats scheduled for departure to other countries.

The gold market - the world's largest - was crammed full of jewellery that seemed almost identical across the market's hundreds of stores.  Much of the jewellery was a bit too large and showy for us - with necklaces that were almost a large as the front of a t-shirt. Nonetheless, we enjoyed browsing the merchandise and hopping into stores to breathe in the air conditioning and try to negotiate the cost of gold coins down to fair market prices. What a bustling part of Dubai!  

To the desert...

Having seen the remarkable development in Dubai, we ventured out into the desert to learn a bit more about what life was like here before the growth of this new city.

Yaser, our tour guide (for the second time, as he took us out last year as well!) drove us to the desert and educated most of us along the way about desert life. Fred, however, opted instead to "go fishing" en route! 

Equipping us with trusty sun and sand head protection, we hopped into the vintage Landrovers and headed out to the conservation area to drive on some of the dunes.

There are not too many animals that live out in the desert but we managed to spot some gazelles and some oryx feeding on the land. The desert drive was a quiet one, with many photo ops and some slightly less dramatic dunes than hoped, but it certainly gave a sense of how vast the desert is and how quiet a life it must have been before the city was built.

After a nice ride, we headed to the Al Maha Hotel and were treated to showers at the their spa before dinner. Having washed the sand off of ourselves, we headed to the lobby  for a glass of celebratory pomegranate juice (the hotel was alcohol-free because of the new year holiday) and then sat down outside overlooking be desert to enjoy a serene and delicious meal.

As we made our way back to the hotel after an ambitious day, many of us joined Fred in "going fishing" for the ride home.

Dubai from the sky...

We have always been told that the best way to see the city is from above so we booked an aerial tour to check out Dubai from the sky.

With another very early morning pick up, we made if through a security briefing and "pat down" and were airborne a by 8:30am.  

Lucky to have one of the clearest mornings in recent months, we passed over the small and large Palm (one fully occupied and the other with only a few houses scattered on its massive ronds), the dense marina area, the world islands, the DIFC business district with the world's tallest building - the Burj Khalifa - and then onto the Creek for our final landing.

Dubai has taken many risks with its architecture, building out new islands in different shapes and testing out varied and exciting styles, even playing with the spacing between buildings to test tenant experiences.  All of this is very visible from the sky and certainly makes you realize just how remarkable the city's architectural achievements really are.  

Dubai has an incredibly ambitious set of new projects planned for Expo 2020 - including a new Lagoon, Taj Arabia and the Mall of the World to name just a few.  We cannot wait to take the tour again in a few years!

Sky high

Stunning Dubai from the sky...

Camels, camels, camels...

Because of the desert heat, the camel racing circuit runs either very early in the morning or late in the afternoon.  Concerned about the heat still being too intense in the late afternoon, we decided to head to the races early morning.

With little race information available either via the internet or numerous phone calls, we decided to arrive at 7am, halfway between the potential 6:30am and 7:30am start times that had been tossed around.

After almost an hour of driving, we were nervous to walk into the racing stadium to find ourselves the only ones there! Luckily, after a few minutes of watching some camels training on the track, our fantastic driver, Bilal, came running to tell us that he had spoken with some of the camel trainers and had been informed that the races were not actually taking place at the race track that day but along a random road just one street over.  We jumped excitedly into the car and headed over to watch, strangely finding ourselves in a hoard of charging cars rushing down the street honking at their camels.

The honking drivers are actually trying to direct  the remote control "racer" robots perched on the camels' backs.  These robots had replaced child riders a number of years ago but required the remote control operator to be within a certain distance in order to give instructions to the camel.

When we got our of the car, we realized we were still the only tourists and thus gained the attention of the numerous camel trainers and owners who thought we were a hilarious group.  They happily answered all of our questions and even took us into the paddock to see some of the camels up close.

There were about 20 races with 50 camels per race so it felt like there were camels roaming everywhere. Nonetheless, the whole event was remarkably well organized and camels moved quickly from training grounds to the race track and off along the race course with a very short turnaround time.

Camels are adorable when they run.  Unlike horses, camels actually run with the front and back leg on the same side moving at the same time.  This can make for quite an awkward looking run even though they manage to get up to speeds of 40km per hour.  By the end of the race, if they managed not to get distracted and simply stop or turn around and run the wrong way, they have clearly exhausted themselves as they move around slowly with masses of saliva flying out of their panting mouths.

The winning camels here only receive 750 AED but the real prize comes if the owner can sell his camel to the wealthy buyers who are watching as they too race alongside the track in their cars.

Although we got off to a somewhat slow start, the camel races were definitely a winning highlight of Fred and El's visit!

Dubai - The Culinary Tour?

We were thrilled when Beth's parents stopped by for a visit after their trip to Turkey.

Although they were here for just under a week, we had an aggressive schedule of touring in store for them and managed to cover many of Dubai's highlights.  

Our first stop on the trip was the Burj Al Arab - the world's first seven star hotel - for afternoon tea and a good catch up.  We lounged for much of the afternoon, eating far too many sweet treats and sipping on champagne and sparkling date juice.

This definitely kicked off an aggressive eating schedule as we hit many of Dubai's hotspots to taste what they had in store.  These included:

• Riding the Mina A' Salam's hotel gondola along its man-made waterways to get to Zheng He's Chinese restaurant
• Venturing onto the man-made Palm island for seafood at the Sofitel's Moana restaurant
• Savouring a five-course dinner in the desert at the Al Maha hotel
• Enjoying an evening of dancing fountains and Italian fare at the Armani Hotel 
• Savouring a regal lunch at a former palace turned Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi

At each of these places, we marveled not only at the incredible food but also the way they could blend it with such spectacular architectural backdrops.

Although Dubai city may not have the long history of some of the other great cities of the world, it certainly can offer visitors some truly divine and memorable eating experiences.

Still hot in Hatta...

Having settled comfortably back into life in Dubai, we decided to take another step towards full integration by driving the Dubai highways rather than relying on taxis to navigate the wild and speedy traffic.

Securing a great deal through our finally operational local credit card, we picked up our Budget rental car and headed through the city en route to Hatta, an inland enclave located on the eastern side of Dubai territory.  Situated in the Hajar mountains, Hatta is a little bit cooler that downtown Dubai and thus is a popular summer getaway for the locals looking to escape the intense summer heat.

Thanks to Geoff's excellent road skills, we enjoyed an easy drive across the territory and arrived in just under two hours.  Unfortunately, our arrival at the Hatta Fort Hotel - the nicest AND the only hotel in Hatta - was not quite as smooth.  Although we had a hotel confirmation about our booking, they had somehow forgotten to enter it into the system and at the same time overbooked for that evening.  This left us in a bit of a predicament, especially after their initial offer was to put us up in a hotel "right down the street" which actually turned out to be steps away from our apartment in downtown Dubai!  Unwilling to accept anything less than the room we had paid for, we eventually managed to find a solution and settled into our lovely lodgings.

Unlike most of the guests who opted to laze around the pool and enjoy the relaxing surroundings and slightly cooler temperatures, we had a busy 24 hours.  We  started with a visit to the Hatta dam, then checked out the historic fort (and another fort, which actually turned out not to be a fort but rather the enormous private home of a local), toured through the town and then made several turns around the pesky roundabout in front of our hotel before heading in for dinner.

After watching the hotel concierge quietly laugh at us for thinking we could make it out to the Hatta Pools the next morning in our tiny Chevrolet Spark, we opted to hire a guide with a four-wheel drive vehicle to take us to Oman to swim in the Pools.  This proved to be a good move, not only because we would surely never have made it through the rough and rocky terrain in our compact car but also because our guide was a 28-year touring veteran and a superb host.  He was knowledgeable not only about the pools and its role in supplying water to the surrounding areas but about all parts of the Emirate culture.

As we approached the Oman checkpoint, the customs officer checked our passports and allowed us through because we looked "European" and thus he felt confident we would not litter.  The officers had made the unusual decision to start limiting access to Europeans (aka. the people they felt were "least likely to littler") earlier that week after some spirited Eid celebrations left far too much garbage at this wonderful tourist site.

We arrived at the Pools to find some celebratory leftovers and some unfortunate graffiti sprayed on the rocks.  Nonetheless, we plunged in the gorgeously warm waters and were not disappointed.  Being the first ones to arrive at the pools that day, the surroundings were calm and quiet and we swam in an almost hushed tone so as not to disturb the majestic surround or incredible sounds of rushing water making its way through the crevices and over the rocks.

After an easy trip back to Dubai and a car returned to the dealer before the deadline and without any "driving fines", we were thrilled about our first Dubai road trip and couldn't wait to start planning the next one.