Arrival in Dubai

After leaving home at 16.30 for a 21.40 flight on Friday we arrived at Heathrow with plenty of time to spare and were treated to a lovely Hilton Hotel Restaurant meal before boarding. The flight itself was very decent with good service and it was comfortable enough. Megan slept for about 4 hours out of the 6 and a bit we were flying so she was happy. I on the other hand slept on and off for about 15 minutes so wasn't exactly feeling refreshed! Our flight was overnight and the highlight for me was when we had just passed over Baghdad and i looked out to the left and saw the most beautiful coloured sunrise with deep oranges and purples, absolutely amazing. I then looked out to the right and it was still absolutely pitch black! Very strange but one of the few perks of being at 38,000 ft at that time of day!

Our first day in Dubai was a very strange one for me as I really hadn't slept so had been awake for about 21 hours by the time we landed! We were taken back to my cousin Louise's apartment (which is lovely and very spacious) in Jebel Ali where we dumped our stuff and were shown around the area to the swimming pool and mall etc. In the evening at about 5.30 we met up with my Uncle, Christopher (who is also on holiday here) at a hotel rooftop bar for half-price cocktails as the sun went down, and then had a meal in the Jumeirah Beach Hotel (a five star hotel that is designed to look like a wave), a very relaxing end to a very long time of being awake!


We decided to get straight into tourist action on Sunday morning and made our way into town via taxi. The taxi's here are very reasonably priced, air conditioned and the drivers are actually polite. Imagine driving on a motorway for 25-30 minutes in a taxi in the UK, how much would that cost? Well here it was 70AED, about £9, absolutely brilliant! We got on the "Big Bus Tour" in Dubai and actually really enjoyed it. It was great because we got to get our bearings slightly, see all of the main things and learn a bit of history and some interesting facts. One of which is about why the roads are so busy here, because petrol is cheaper than water!
1 gallon petrol = 6.6AED, 1 gallon water = 7AED!!!

We picked up the tour at Wafi City, a big shopping centre and made our way into the old town by the creek and stopped at the Dubai Museum in the cool basement of the Al Fahidi Fort. This was good and showed the roots and development of Dubai from a small town in the early 1900's to the booming city it is now.


The tour continued from here and went past the Old Souk (Souk means market), under the creek and onwards to the Gold Souk. There were more jewellers together here than I have ever seen before. More than 400 shops carrying over 100,000kg of gold ranging from 18cts upwards and selling gold, white gold and even purple gold! Brilliant for a wander round.

We continued onwards and after lunch went to Al Karama which is famed for it "genuine fakes". We were asked by someone as soon as we stepped off the bus if we wanted bags, watches, wallets, clothes etc. and luckily we did. We followed him for quite a long way and started to get a little worried about where he was actually taking us but we ended up in a shop (always a good thing) and were guided out the back and upstairs to a secret Aladdin's Den of bags and wallets, Megan was in heaven! There was such a wide range that we ended up staying for quite a while longer than we anticipated before meeting up with Louise and Marc and heading off to my Aunt and Uncle, Michelle and Derek's house for dinner.

This is where Christopher and Susie are staying and where we'll be staying too and I must say it is an absolutely amazing place! 3 giant double bedrooms, a massive kitchen/dining room, an even bigger lounge/bar area but best of all is the swimming pool outside with a wet/dry bar. Lovely!