Middle East Adventure...Part 4

On Sunday I took a taxi from Dubai up to Abu Dhabi. Sunday is actually a work day for the UAE but they ended up having a religious holiday on Sunday (and they only announced it one week prior so I couldn't plan for it). But this did mean I ended up with an extra day to explore. The cab only cost $65 and it took me about an hour and a half (hotel to hotel). Not a bad deal. The other option would have been a bus which would have taken over 2hrs and only costs pennies... Dubai is all about luxury so I figured might as well go for it. Plus this way I had some extra time to lay out by the pool Sunday morning. The pool was actually packed - it doesn't matter what time it is, the sun is so strong you could get some color anytime, and it's so hot that it would be warm enough to layout all day. As a side note: I did not come home with a tan. I slathered on 50 spf the whole time in fear of getting fried, and I ended up staying completely white.

Last photo in Dubai

I spent my afternoon in Abu Dhabi wandering around. I tried to find their Gold Souk but I'm not sure I actually found it -- it was pretty much just a mall with a few gold shops in it. Not as cool as Dubai's. I checked out a few local shops -- including the tiniest book shop ever. And then I wandered farther down the Corniche to the public beach. The rules here in Abu Dhabi are much stricter than in Dubai - they had signs and "guards" to make sure you cover back up before leaving the beach area. And they have a "private" beach next to the public one... public = free, private = $5 or so to go in to separate the riff raff from the higher classes. (I hung out with the riff raff at the public beach.) I didn't go swimming - my experience in Dubai taught me that 100 degree water isn't fun to swim in, but I did have fun people watching.

After Sunday Funday I had one day left of work before flying back home. One of my co-workers in the Middle East office, Anurag, offered to take me to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. (If he hadn't offered I would have gone anyway - it was most definitely on my list of must-see places.) It is the largest mosque in the UAE and can hold 40,000 people for prayer. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheikh_Zayed_Mosque

The require all women to wear robes and use scarves to cover their hair and they are thoughtful enough to give them to you when you get there. It was such a cool / wonderful / amazing experience. I could talk so much about it but I'll just show you some of the neat pictures I took instead.

This last pic I took from the cab on the way to the airport. My flight on Monday was at 10:30pm. I was originally planning to spend some time at our Amsterdam office so my original flights were Abu-Dhabi to Amsterdam (with a layover in Frankfurt) and then I would fly home from Amsterdam to Des Moines (with a layover in Des Moines) a few days later. But since my Amsterdam visit got cancelled I tried to reschedule my flights home. Unfortunately it was crazy expensive to get a direct flight back to Des Moines form Abu Dhabi so the cheapest thing was to pay $250 and just push my flights together. This resulted in an afternoon/evening layover in Amsterdam. My trip to Amsterdam was a bit of blur but I managed to take a lot of pictures :)   Now since I'm actually writing this post in October after my second trip to Amsterdam, I will just wait to describe everything all together :)

So this finally concludes my Middle East Adventure!    

Middle East Adventure... Part 3

So where were we... oh, I was just waking up on Friday morning afternoon in my sweet hotel in Dubai. I accidentally slept from midnight until 4pm. oops. But apparently I was exhausted and needed the sleep. Luckily the city is awake all night so it wasn't a big deal. I had the rest of Friday and all day Saturday to continue to explore Dubai so I was still able to fit in lots of fun things....


The Beach --

I was really hoping to see someone in burkini (like in sex and the city 2) but I didn't. Instead I saw women walk into the water with their whole burka on and other women just sat on the beach in their black burkas while their kids were in swimsuits in the water. That was even more incredible to me because it was so dang hot on the beach. (I literally burnt my feet on the sand!) I also saw a lot of women in regular bikinis. Dubai is so full of tourist and non-local residents so it's a big melting pot and on the beach there was a wide variety.

The Gold Souk--
The gold market in Dubai is definitely something to be seen. The government regulates the quality of gold being sold and there are so many vendors here that competition keeps the prices good. So you can actually get a pretty good deal here -- if you're into fancy gold jewelry. I tried to find something plain that I might actually wear but that is was easier said than done.



lots of gold shops!





world's heaviest ring -- guinness book of world records

 The Architecture --
Construction is everywhere which is incredible because there are already SO many tall buildings in Dubai. When taking the elevated train around Dubai I kept thinking, "oh this must be the edge of town" and then another downtown looking area would pop-up. It's crazy! These are all from different spots around Dubai.

The Hotel Pool --
While it was neat to go down to the beach - it was just too hot to actually enjoy it. The first 3 minutes in the water felt nice - but then the water no longer felt cooler than the air and you can only sit in a hot tub for so long. So I headed back to the oh-so-refreshing hotel infinity pool.

They definitely were regulating the water temp and had to be cooling it down. It felt so nice. I spent some quality time here on Saturday enjoying the views, sipping on fabulous drinks from the swim-up bar, reading my kindle, and ordering lunch poolside. My bill ended up being a little pricey but it was well worth it :) I so would have loved to relax more.

The Mall of the Emirates--
In the last post I mentioned going to the Dubai Mall - and although it is the biggest in the world, it's definitely not the only one. The Mall of the Emirates seemed felt pretty big too and is also known throughout the world. Inside the mall is an indoor ski range! I knew I had to check it out - mostly I just wanted to be able to say I actually saw people skiing in the middle of the desert. :) I think I hyped it up in my head a bit too much because when I actually saw it - it was not as neat as I thought it would be and not as big as I imagined either. But in the grand scheme of things - if you grew up in the middle east region and you'd never seen snow before, this place would have been pretty cool. :)

The Desert --
I didn't really get to see much of the desert which was kind of a bummer. But to do a desert excursion would have been pretty pricey and there were plenty of other things to experience in town. I did get a glimpe of the desert on my taxi drive between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. It wasn't really as glamourous at I had thought it would be anyway.

So that's pretty much my experience in Dubai. Up next will be my final day and a half in Abu Dhabi!

Middle East Adventure... Part 2



Burj Kahlifa - tallest building in the world

So on Thursday after work I drove down to Dubai with a coworker who lives down there. The two cities are about an hour and a half apart. I purchased my hotel on wednesday from Expedia and got a fantastic deal for the Sofitel Jumeriah Beach. It has beach access and is in this really trendy/tourist area - Jumeriah Beach. Two of my coworkers had flights out of Dubai at 2am (yes, 2 AM. They have weird flight times there) so the three of us went to the Dubai Mall. It's the largest mall in the world with over 1500 stores. It's right next to the Burj Khalifa which is the tallest building in the world. I passed on paying $$$ to go to the top of the building but instead we ate dinner outside, took in the views and got to see the fountain light show. (Same designers as the fountains at the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas. I find it weird that I've never seen those but now have seen the copycat which is across the globe.)



Fountains - light show



Aquarium inside the Dubai Mall





Proof I was there :)



Inside the mall - they were doing a cultural showcase - Falconry is a big sport here - the best falcons can sell for $100,000



After a full night, I finally made it back to my hotel. And WOW! it was so fancy! My last minute deal from Expedia was not only a great price but a great hotel! Way out in the distance is Atlantis. I never made it out there but heard it's pretty sweet.



Night view



Day view

After a LONG night's sleep, I started the weekend vacation portion of my trip... More to come.

Middle East Adventure... Part 1

It's gonna take me awhile to get through all this content, so please bare with me...

Part 1 of ??? on my adventure to the Middle East!

On June 10th I left the Des Moines Airport at 4:30pm. Arrived in Chicago around 5:40 and then got departed Chicago at 8:30 pm. I landed in Abu Dhabi at 7:25pm on Monday evening. Yep, I took a 14-hr non-stop flight from Chicago to the Middle East.

Luckily I was able to get some sleep on the plane (mostly due to advil pm and a glass of wine) because I didn't give myself any time to recover before I began training. I facilitated presentation skills training for our sales engineers on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Thankfully it went well - or at least the director who asked me to come over and do the training thought that it did! But I don't think you really want to hear about work-- and certainly in the future I don't want to come back to this blog and read about work, so let's get into the cool stuff.

First, it wasn't actually cool over there - it was a freakin sauna! The moment I stepped outside the airport on Monday night, my glasses fogged up and it really did feel like walking into a sauna with all my clothes on. yuck! Later I found out that Monday was actually the coolest day I was there - only a high of 97 degrees.

After work on Tuesday I took a quick walk down to the Corniche, completely sweat through my clothes, and then met up with a few of my coworkers for dinner. The craziest thing I saw on Tuesday was people running... in 100 degree heat. Oh, I forgot to mention that the humidity was around 60%. So it's definitley not a dry heat there.

The Corniche, Abu Dhabi



Abu Dhabi

On Wednesday after work a coworker drove me over to the Emirates Palace before we met up with the rest of the Abu Dhabi office for dinner. The Emirates Palace is a 6-star hotel, it's actually never been a true palace because royalty hasn't lived there. Every surface was marble or glass so it oozed luxury but kinda felt a little cold. In the hotel there was even a vending machine for gold coins! Crazy!

 

Entrance to the Emirates Palace. There is a guard at a gate before going through this which checks to make sure you are dressed appropriately to enter. No shorts or tank tops.

The front of the Emirates Palace.

Special cars that pick up VIPs from the airport. They are super luxurious (read: EXPENSIVE) cars but I don't recall the name of the brand. Everyone drives luxury cars like maserati and lamborghini and these are even more prestigious.

View after walking in the front entrance. The hotel has almost 400 rooms ranging in price from $350 up to $11,500 a night!

View up looking at the Central Dome approx 73 meters above ground. In total there are 114 domes in the hotel.

Marble floors. Marble in the hotel was imported from 13 countries across the world.

Vending machine for gold coins. EXPENSIVE gold coins. I recall seeing one that was worth $1400 USD. Maybe you'd rather eat your gold than buy a coin - 5 kg (11 lbs) of pure edible gold is used per year for decoration on desserts.

Exterior view from the "back" side, closest to the beach. There's 1.3 km of private beach (0.8 miles).

There are 8000 trees set in landscaped gardens. All the palm trees had to be imported.

Here I'm standing on the front terraces facing the hotel. These buildings are just across the street.

It's kinda hard to tell in this pic but the building on the right are still be constructed.

View looking directly straight out from the main door of the hotel. There are 12 external fountains on the grounds and 8 indoor water features. 

View of the front of the hotel again. There are 1002 chandeliers throughout with the largest weighing 2.5 tons.

 
 
After our tour of the Emirates Palace we went to dinner. During that dinner my coworkers convinced me to spend the weekend down in Dubai instead of staying in Abu Dhabi. The weekend in the Middle East is Friday and Saturday. Plus there ended up being a religious holiday on Sunday of that week (it was announced only a week in advance because the had to wait to see where the moon would be) so I ended up with an unintentional 3 day weekend! There's lots to say about Dubai so I'll have to leave that for another post!