I don't really want to go on about it so lets get this out of the way to begin with. Driving on the highways in the UAE freaks me out.
Its just so fast! I've never driven that fast before. And if it was just fast and there were no other hazards then that would be totally fine but you've got these other cars being driven by suicidal maniac types who are also doing 150km per hour and then over take and pull in front of you. Its scary. We were driving to Dubai yesterday and this black cat was in the middle of the road all of a sudden and we had to swerve to miss it, which can freak you out at those speeds. Bec and Ryan are both fantastic drivers, its everyone else on the road that worrys me. I'm sure I'll get used to it, yesterday was my first time really, the speed was fun, the other cars were not.
Let us never speak of this again.
Brunch in Dubai was awesome. I met up with my Cousin Ron and his wife Pat who live out there and we had brunch at the Jumeriah Beach resort in the Beachcombers restaurant which is this beautiful restaurant overlooking the Burj Al Arab and the Arabian sea. For the longest time I've wanted to see the Burj Al Arab, possibly the combination of too many documentaries on the discovery network and using it as the setting for a rpg once and yesterday I saw it. Its a little smaller in real life that I thought it would be but still, pretty impressive. Brunch is big on Fridays in Dubai, everybody goes out and settles in somewhere for the afternoon. Its a practise I wholeheartedly approve of, we had this beautiful buffet sitting overlooking the beach and chatting until the sun started to go down. I took a million pictures some of which I will post for you. After we left Ron and Pat we headed over to the Mall of the Emirates so Ryan could try his hand at snowboarding. That's one of the things I love about the UAE, you go somewhere and you'll find the most incongruous things, at Khalydia mall the other day we wandered past a roller coaster. In the Mall of the Emirates is a giant ski slope, chilled to a shivery minus 4 degrees you can hire skis, snowboards, gear and an instructor and settle in for an evening of skiing entirely forgetting that you're in the middle of the desert. If you don't feel like going for a ski then you can just wander around in your snow boots and big long down coats looking at the sculpture or having a little drink or snack from the ice bar. Was kind of a warm up for the icehotel pardon the pun. I'll be sleeping in that temperature when I get there, at least now I know its doable. We filmed Ryan having a snowboarding lesson, he did really well, I would have been on my arse in 5 seconds were it me.
Then at the end Bec and I, a little delirious from the cold possibly took way too many photos of ourselves mucking around in these snow caves. I would spend much more time than is necessary at the Mall of the Emirates if I lived here, and we only saw a little bit of it.
On the way home we drove on to the palm to see Atlantis, the giant luxury hotel that had the 30 million dollar party a couple of weeks back. Very pretty.
It was just a brilliant day basically, I saw some amazing things and relaxed with fantastic people. All this makes up for the year of planning, the endless running around and organising and the 24 hour not sleeping which included a 15 hour flight. Days like yesterday are my reward, and I cant thank Bec and Ryan enough and Ron and Pat for brunch. I definitely want to come back this way on my way back to Oz next year, I think another brunch is in order. xxxx
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