Granny Goes Gallavanting

Up early and down to breakfast early while Narms was still asleep. I chatted with the chap from Franz Josef that we met the other morning. He is here for the World Parachute Champs. He was telling me that the Prince of Dubai is a sky diver so he has poured millions of dollars into developing a place to sky dive here. He said it was the best facility he had jumped at. Then upstairs to repack my bag to find that, amazingly, everything is still fitting into my case. Narms was just heading down for breakfast as I came back to our room I am humming and haaing about whether I need to buy another hand luggage bag to pack all my goodies to go through customs or whether to leave as is. I still have my overnight bag and my big blue denim shopping bag and back pack empty. I opted to go off on my own this morning and went down to catch up with Narms who was happy with that. So, off I went. I caught a taxi to Jumeirah Mosque in time for the guided tour at 10am. This was taken by two very lovely Musliim ladies and was done as part of the Sheik Mohammed Centre for Cultural Learning – Open Doors Open Minds programme.

That took just over an hour, and just as I came out from there I saw the Big Bus on the other side of the road. So I decided to catch this bus to travel around for the rest of the day. At Dh220 it was going to be good value I decided and it would land me at all the places I wanted to visit. Crossing the road was a bit of a mission, had to walk about 400m down the road to find a crossing, and then back up the other side. There was a fence down the middle of the road, so no J-walking here. Luckily the bus stop was right outside Starbucks (Yep all the franchises are here: KFC, McDonalds, Subway, and I see Burger Fuel is about to open) so time for an iced mocha before the next bus. The first stop was Burg al Arab – yes almost right outside this iconic building, and right on the beach so I even got to get my feet wet. The water was lovely and warm, and if I had had my togs with me, I may have been tempted to have a swim. Twenty minutes later it was back on the bus and next stop Jumeirah Madinat. This is a hotel complex but also has a traditional souk and lovely restaurants and the Arabian waterways. Did some souvenir shopping here and found another Pride of Kashmir outlet, and once again resisted the temptation to buy here. This shop is very expensive, but the merchandise is very beautiful. Had a cup of Earl Grey Tea and a cheese pastry for my lunch at Costa, overlooking the waterways and got a couple of good photos of Burg Al Arab from here. My camera was playing up today, keeps getting a message “unexpected error. Please turn your camera off” and then when I do that it keeps wanting to connect to the internet. And then it ran the battery down really quickly and by this time (only about 1pm) and I was down to only one bar of battery. Back on the bus to Wadi where I changed onto the Red Bus Line. I was hopeful of making it to Stop 5 in time for the 3.30 dhow cruise, but I was 7 minutes late and the next cruise was to be 5.30pm. I decided to hang around and do it, seeing I had made my way all the way here. Got talking to a guy from Malaysia – started chatting to him as he had a NZ World Cup polo shirt on so I thought he may have been a kiwi, but he wasn’t. He was from Malaysia and he hadn’t even gone to the World Cup. He was in NZ last year. He was interesting to talk to, he works for an American telecommunication company in Malaysia and travels all over the world. He decided not to wait for the cruise – wasting too much time having to wait for another hour and a half, he said. But I wanted to wait, and was hopeful that I was not going to be the only one waiting. Then got chatting to a guy from Argentina, Leandro, and his friend Hugo who was originally from Venezuela but living in Milan. Leandro is a librarian and Hugo a flight attendant for Air Italia. Charming young men, who are going off on a cruise tomorrow. We sat on the wharf chatting until we were allowed to board the dhow at about 5pm. Sat up on the deck and watched the sun going down, and finally the cruise started at 5.30pm on the dot. Not a minute sooner, not a minute later. Very nice cruise. Food and drinks were available and they were cooking a lamb kebab which smelt very good, but it was interesting to see that nobody on the boat (which was full by the way) had anything to eat and only a few people drank soft drinks or beer. The guys were excited to see their cruise boat at the wharf. Hugo had been to NZ on a cruise a couple of years ago, and Leandro was hopeful of coming to NZ so we exchanged email addresses and I told them to look me up if they ever come over. After the cruise we got back on the Big Bus and were taken to Burjaman Mall – yes another mall. The three of us wandered around for a while, but they wanted to do boy shopping so we parted company and I headed to the foyer to check out the Da Vinci exhibition which was the highlight of this mall for me. I am obviously over shopping. The exhibition was brilliant, all his paintings and inventions on display. From the mall I managed to find the Metro and get myself to the Mall of Emirates where I had dinner at Tribes, an African restaurant. I had another delicious salad, lettuce and 3 colours of chargrilled capsicum, red cabbage and grilled Haloumi cheese with a very light balsamic dressing. I even treated myself to a mocktail here – Tribe Special and it was strawberry, lime, cranberry and brown sugar. Yummo. While waiting for my meal to arrive they brought out a wooden bread board with a loaf of freshly made bread with a pottle of French butter. We were entertained by African drummers, very good but ever so loud. This place if very popular with young people – yep I would have been the oldest one in there. Behind me was a table of about 25 young girls, maybe early twenties, mixed ethnicities but very very very trendy dressers. No abaya, head scarves or buquas or covering of any sort, in fact very short skirts and very high heeled shoes. They were celebrating someone’s birthday, complete with birthday cake and candles. Very dark, shiny black wait staff, but extremely well spoken and incredibly polite and extremely efficient. My salad was delicious and I looked around to see what other people were eating and it also looked amazingly good. Put this one on the list of places to visit for any one coming here. On the Metro I sat by a young guy from Sri Lanka, his name was Dilan and works as a chef at a French restaurant at the Atlantis. He helped me to negotiate my way off the metro and through the MOE . Gave me his phone number and said to call him when we get to Atlantis and he will look after us. Wow, what an amazing day. People are just so friendly. I have said this many times in this blog, but it is so true. Even the tour guides, both at the mosque and on the dhow cruise said that all nationalities and ethnicities live together in harmony in Dubai. And that would be so true. I have not seen one angry person. Everyone smiles, helps you to find your way if you ask, opens doors, stands back to allow you to enter a lift, and I even had a young man stand up for me to sit down on the metro the other day. Wow, what a wonderful place. And now today it is Monday morning. Narms has beaten me up this morning and already she is down at breakfast. It is only 7.30 now and she has already been gone the whole time I have been typing this up, so I had better get a move on. So time for a quick shower and I will post this to my blog while I have my breakfast. Only one more sleep here at Ibis Mall of Emirates. Tomorrow we go to Atlantis. YEAH YEAH.