Phew – here we are, settled into our room in the Ibis Hotel. A room with a double bed !!!! Woops not quite what we ordered, but the reception desk promised to fix that this afternoon for us. In the meantime we’ve showered and changed and been downstairs for breakfast and now Narms is having a ‘Nana Nap’ and I’m doing the blog. So much for those comments at work a couple of weeks ago about putting me in a wheelchair at the airport and Narms telling everyone she was taking her ‘granny’ on a holiday. She’s the one asleep, and I’m awake still. To be fair though it has been a long and tiring trip. We were both awake at 5.30 on Friday morning and although our flight wasn’t leaving until 6pm and we were due at the airport at 4pm, Narms mother wanted to take us through to Auckland earlier and we left Tauranga just after 10.15am. A wee detour at Waihi for me to say goodbye to Rowan and we then had a good trip through arriving at the airport around 1.30pm. So a long wait, but it was good not having to rush and stress and we were right at the front of the queue as soon as check-in for the flight was announced, so we had plenty of time to look around in Duty Free and to buy our souvenir soft toys for the Sevens – Narms got a kiwi and I got a wee pukeko. Boarding the plane was very efficient and we both had aisle seats which was good,. Dinner was served on the flight to Sydney and then we had a 45 minute wait there. We had to come off the plane and go through security, but not as strict as in NZ, we only had to put our fluids and cosmetics in the tray. In NZ you have to put your camera, phone, lap top, keys etc . My bag and I were scanned for explosives as we left NZ and Narms was picked on in Australia. But apart from that all was well. From Sydney it was a fourteen hour flight – and on this flight we got another dinner, a supper and a breakfast – it seemed that we did a lot of eating. I had reading and writing with me, but chose instead to catch up on a couple of movies - saw Larry Crowne which I had missed at home and watched Last Night – another chick-flick. Then caught up on four episodes of Sea Patrol and the first three episodes of Hawaii 5-0 which I had also missed at home. Even managed to get quite a bit of sleep as well. We landed at 5.30am and it took about an hour to get through the arrival process, although for us it was very easy. They just scanned and then stamped our passports and that was it. For some of those arriving it took ages and they needed to have had eye scans done and needed to be carrying that documentation with them. We only had to put our hand luggage through the scanners, didn’t need to empty anything out, and just picked up our checked luggage and walked straight on out. No checks in place at all, and although there were two doors – one saying “Nothing to Declare” and the other saying “Goods to Declare” there didn’t appear to be anyone on duty to check things out. We came out into the arrival hall to find a man standing with a sign saying Mr Heather Graham. He was quite surprised to discover that his passengers were in fact women, and chuckled and joked about that on the way to our hotel. He gave us little snippets of information along the way ,pointed out the shopping mall and the food hall, and when he got us to the hotel he carried our bags in, took our passports off us and got us all checked in before leaving us. He even gave me his telephone number to ring him if we needed any help with anything while we are in the country!!!! He shook our hands and kissed us both on both cheeks before leaving us. Pretty good service. Thank you Kylee for organising that for us. The view out the window of the hotel is interesting – we look out onto high rise buildings and the airport must be fairly close as there is a constant stream of planes coming and going past the window. There is some sort of construction or landscaping going on right outside the hotel – and as it is not quite 10am local time (6.53pm NZ time Saturday) there isn’t a lot of traffic around as yet. Friday and Saturday are the weekend days here, and the shops open from 10am to 10pm or midnight . We studied our guide books and itinerary downstairs at breakfast this morning and the loose plan is to go over to the Diera Mall this morning, have a rest this afternoon and then head to the Diera Souqs this afternoon around 4.30pm and pretty much follow the itinerary as set out in our guide book. The temperature is supposed to be about 22-28 degrees and there was showers forecast, although it is not looking much like rain at the moment. The sky is a funny bluey grey colour, but not a rain clouds type of grey, more just a murky, smoky smoggy looking grey. But it will be interesting to see how the day pans out. We’ve got the aircon on so a bit hard to judge how hot it might be out there. After my last two long flights I had incredibly swollen feet and ankles, so this time I invested in a pair of travel stockings – and it would seem that that was a very good $48 investment. My feet aren’t swollen at all, and in fact feel pretty comfortable. So hopefully they will stay like that. The pharmacist suggested I wear them the whole time, but if we are going to be doing a lot of walking today I don’t think I will bother keeping them on. So now it is just about 6pm. We spent our first day at the Diera City Mall – what an amazing place. It’s quite big by our standards, but relatively small apparently by Dubai standards with only about 350 shops. A wide variety of both local flavour shops and all the labels – including Debenhems and Marks and Spencers and Boots. Narms bought a GHD which was on special price today only, and we spent a bit of time wandering around the local version of the Warehouse. We bought some water and pringles, and Narms bought some shoes. The range of clothes was amazing – and they even sold some reasonably priced Abaya – albeit they were a bit plain looking. We saw some women in the most amazingly embroidered and jewelled abaya – I would love to have one of those and will certainly be on the lookout for one in the Mall of Emirates and in the fabric souq. The fashions are wide and diverse, as are the people. Some very modern and westernised, and others very traditional. The men look interesting in their white dress and head gear. And they are so impeccably white and immaculate. It would seem that they never sit down in them as there is not a single crinkle or crease in them. !! So with very tired and swollen feet we came back to the hotel for a ‘nana nap’ and the plan was to have a rest, go on a bus tour and then to go back to the mall for dinner. We went downstairs and got our room changed to a room with twin beds and carted our gear from the 3rd floor down to the 1st floor on the other side of the building, so now we look out onto the back of some other buildings. But hey, now we have a bed each. And we lay down for our naps, and awoke at 9pm, turned over and went back to sleep and woke at 11.45pm. Luckily neither of us was very hungry, so a nibble on some fruit, a few pringles and a drink of water and we chatted and planned our next day, and poured over our guide books to get ourselves orientated to the city before turning out the light at 3am. We woke again briefly at about 5pm and finally woke for real at 6.15 with Narms sitting bolt upright in bed saying – “Oh no . My GHD will have a Dubai plug.” I jokingly told her, now you will have to buy a conversion plug which will cost you $100 and now your GHD costs the same as it would have cost you at home. When she realised I was joking, she called me a shithead. What a nice travelling companion ha. And so now to start on day 2. We are off to the Gold Souq and we are booked in the Islamic Culture Centre for lunch, so we’ll catch you all at later.