Friday, April 1st
This was the first full day with my parents. We got up leisurely and decided to head to one of Chad's favorite restaurants for brunch. It was right across from the beach and we actually found a parking spot. We headed to the restaurant and got in line. (Friday brunch in Dubai is a big production.) We shopped a bit at a street fair while the guys waited in line. We ended up with a table inside. We took our seat and proceeded to WAIT, and WAIT AND WAIT! We finally were able to order and then we visited while we waited for our food. I'm getting used to the "service" at restaurants but, unfortunately, the service on this particular day was ATROCIOUS!!! They started bringing our food about 20 - 30 minutes after we had ordered and we didn't even have our drinks yet! Luckily the food was good and the drinks finally came! After brunch mom & Mitchell walked to the beach and back while we waited for our bill and our change. UGGGHHH!!! Just when I think I'm relaxing and getting used to the city, we have service like this that drives me CRAZY!!!!
We were all tired so we headed back to the apartment to relax at our swimming pool for the afternoon. We had dinner at a Lebanese restaurant called Mir Amin on the Marina Walk outside our apartment that evening and just took it easy. We were all ready for some R&R.
Saturday, April 2nd
The next morning we were off again! We headed to Wafi Mall...with only one wrong turn and less than 5 minute detour - SUCCESS! We made it! We paid for our Big Bus double-decker city tour and were off to explore! The first stop was Creek Park which is a huge park with moonwalks, a children's center, playgrounds and a Dolphinarium. We didn't get out at that stop but it was memorable none the less! From the bus we saw three people dressed up in animal costumes and the life-sized pink bunny was thrusting his hips back and forth while pumping his arms back and forth (the universal "let's get it on" move!) Mitchell and I saw it at the same time and his eyes got as big as saucers and we both started cracking up! Needless to say, Mitchell started doing that pretty soon after and we had to stop that IMMEDIATELY! I can just see him doing that at school! NOW I know where they get the saying about breeding like rabbits! :-)
We passed up the creek walk and a fort/museum and finally hopped off the bus at the Dubai Old Souk. If you've been keeping up with my blogs, you'll know that Souks are stores with everything from scarves, shirts, hooka pipes and all sorts of souvenirs. We found a lot of good deals. My mom couldn't resist getting her own set of Sultan Pepper shakers, some pashimina scarves and a Sultan bank Mitchell couldn't live without! We hopped back on the bus about an hour later, our wallets considerably lighter.
Next we stopped at Sheik Saeed al Maktoun's House, the Sheik's former house that has been turned into a museum of sorts. We were expecting a grand palace and, although it had been restored, it was more like a large mud hut with lots of pictures of the royal family over the years and the growth of Dubai. We were all underwhelmed and headed back to the bus stop to move on to bigger and better things!
Next stop....GOLD SOUK and the Spice Souk!!!! These Souks basically cover a few city blocks and are large covered shopping areas with a walkway in the middle and glass-front stores on both sides. The walkways in the Gold Souk area are very wide and the window displays are amazingly gaudy with gold in excess...hence "Gold Souk"! One window has the largest gold ring in the world, with a plaque from the Guinness Book of World Records backing up their claim! The ring would probably have fit around Mitchell's waist! The Spice Souk was not nearly as ornate and the walkways were much narrower. Many of the vendors have large barrels of spices they want you to smell and, of course, buy! I was amazed at how much Mitchell remembered from our first visit to the Spice Souk. He was giving my mom pop quizzes as to what different spices were...dried lemon, sunflower, saffron, vanilla beans and many more I can't even remember! We went back to an Iranian store we visited on our first trip to the Spice Souk. The same vendor was there and they remembered us (well Mitchell). These older men just LOVE that boy and shook his hand and kissed both his cheeks and his head. He just takes it all in stride! It really is amazing how well he's adjusted!
At this point, it was about 2PM and we were STARVING and hoping we weren't lost in the maze of the Souks. We bought a box of the moistest and most delicious dates I'd ever had as a snack and made our way back to the bus stop. We passed another couple stops and made it back to where we started. We had lunch at Wafi Mall and then hopped back on the bus to go back to the Dhow Boat stop on Dubai Creek. The Dhow boat cruise left at 5:30 PM and to Steve and my excitement, they actually sold BEER on the boat!! Yippeee!!! This is what I CALL a DHOW CRUISE! We cruised Dubai Creek and saw lots of rickety boats that we were told they move goods from Dubai to a lot of Middle Eastern ports (Iran, Iraq, Saudi, etc). They looked like they may sink going across the creek but they moved everything from spices to refrigerators to cars! I guess looks can be deceiving! The cruise was relaxing and beautiful because the sun was setting during our trip. We headed home after the cruise. It was a fun but long and exhausting day!
Sunday - Tuesday that week I had to work because we were interviewing candidates for my CSR jobs. I reviewed more than 650 resumes and, after HR screening, we interviewed 19 people over 3 days. It was interesting, frustrating, exciting and tiring!!! The first day all the male candidates were very good but all the women were poor at best. I was very disappointed in "team girl!" The next day started with a wonderful Filipino girl who had lived in Dubai since she was 8 years old. She was wonderful and well-spoken. After about 10 minutes into the interview I was already excited about getting her on my team and then our GM asked her if she would consider a position as an Executive Assistant. She literally said "It's my DREAM to be an Executive Assistant!" Right then, I knew she was dead to me! He was going to steal her away! I've been giving him a hard time about it ever since! Surprisingly, out of the 19 candidates we interviewed, we will be offering jobs to 11 of them (9 CSRs, the executive assistant, and one logistics coordinator). Not to brag but our HR rep from Saudi was praising me for doing such a good job screening candidates. He said normally you would need to interview about 4 people for every 1 you wanted to hire! Maybe I have a future in HR! :-)
While I worked, Mom, Steve, Chad & Mitchell played at the pool, played games at home and went to the beach. One day they took the train to Mall of the Emirates and saw Space Chimps 2 - from what I heard, I was better off being at work! At least Mitchell like it. We had dinner together every night and met at the Mall of the Emirates one night where we ate at California Pizza Kitchen! Good stuff!
I was able to take vacation AKA "holiday" on Wednesday and Thursday to spend more time with them. Wednesday we decided to go to Aquadventure at the Atlantis Hotel on Palm Jumeriah. We made it there without getting lost. We had to park and then catch a bus that took us to the drop off area. From the drop off area we had to walk through a mall of sorts (part of the hotel complex) in order to get to the entrance of Aquadventure "The largest and most exciting water park in the Middle East" if you believe the advertising! We paid and then set off to find some chairs to act as our "home base" for the day. The chairs were very comfortable and each chair had its own awning you could use for shade if you wanted. After getting settled, we headed to a large kids area with water guns, slides and rope bridges. I went to go in after Mitchell and realized the water was FREEZING!!! He was off and running and I was tiptoeing through the water trying not to get too wet...duh! One of the kids on the structure spotted me and started shooting me with a water gun...the little creep! At this point I just bit the bullet and headed in after Mitchell. By the time I came down, I was thoroughly drenched and the water didn't feel quite so frigid.
Next we decided to float the lazy river. We realized that most all of the water rides and rapids were connected to the lazy river. You could just float around and choose different turn offs to go on different "rides." When we headed off toward the rapids, a large conveyor took us up through a tunnel raft and all. It was a wild ride down through 2 - 3 sections of rapids. We also went on another ride that took you down through a dark tunnel/slide and let you out in a clear tunnel with an aquarium all around it so you were surrounded by stingray, fish and SHARKS! We played in the water and did some relaxing for most of the day and didn't leave until about 5PM. I would definitely go back!
Later that night, Chad & I went out to dinner at a "hot stone" steak house at the Mall of the Emirates. We ordered a mushroom appetizer and it came out on a hot stone and we sliced the mushrooms and were able to cook them on the stone. After that, we ordered steak and they came out the same way...a raw steak on a hot stone, we cut off some pieces and cooked them to our taste. It was the best steak I've had since we've lived her! YUMMY! The waitress asked if we enjoyed our meal and I told her "Yes, I'm a very good cook!"
After dinner, I remembered to buy Mitchell a birthday card (we had gifts but no card yet). Chad bought himself a new camera to document all our adventures. It's a slick Nikon that has all kinds of bells and whistles! If I'm good, I may get to use it someday! Ha! Not likely!
Thursday, April 7th - Mitchell's 8th Birthday!
The morning of Mitchell's birthday we woke up and made pancakes out of Bisquick (Thank you Brad Baker for bringing me REAL Bisquick from the States!) and pork bacon...Mitchell's favorite breakfast. We let him open his presents and then we all got ready for a day at the Dubai Mall. We arrived at the mall at around 11AM. We bought tickets for an 11:30 showing of Rio (excellent movie by the way!) After the movie we wandered around the mall to find the food court (as this is the largest mall in the world, it took us about 45 minutes to find the food court with Mitchell's favorite burger place - Fat burger.) Along the way, we saw the famous diver fountain that is basically a water wall that's 3 stories tall with silver statues of divers that appear to be diving from the top to the pond at the bottom of the fountain. Beautiful!
After lunch, we headed to pick up our tickets to go to the observation deck of the Burj Khalifa (tallest building in the world). Luckily someone at my office told me you needed to pre-buy tickets because #1) they sell out quickly and #2) the tickets are about $25 if you pay in advance and about $100 if you try to buy them directly from the ticket counter! The entrance was like a museum with all kinds of information about the history and making of the building. We had to go through a long walkway to get to the elevator. Again, the walls along the walkway were filled with statistics like there were around 12,000 workers at the building site EVERY DAY during construction! Holy cow! That's a lot of people to keep track of!
We finally made it to the elevators and it was amazing how quickly it took us up 124 flights! I think it took around a minute and my ears popped 4 times! We were all chomping on gum so our heads wouldn't implode! We were finally there and it was AMAZING! Luckily it was a fairly clear day and we could see a LONG WAY! We took a ton of pictures and spent about ½ hour or so roaming around the observation deck taking photos. Chad actually took a close up picture of a moving car with his new camera and you could see the driver! Good investment! When we left, we went through another museum area with more pictures and details about the construction of the building. The amazing thing is that they were still designing the building AS THEY WERE BUILDING IT! They had a testing facility somewhere in Canada where they had a small scale model and tested the effects of the wind and weather on the building. I guess it worked because the building is still standing!
We wandered around the mall for the next couple of hours, taking a break at a coffee shop for a small snack and resting our aching feet! We had dinner reservations at an Italian restaurant called Bice Mare that was in the Souk al Bahar that is next to the Dubai Mall/Burj Khalifa complex and has amazing views of the "dancing fountains" (designed by the same people who designed the Bellagio fountains in Vegas) and the Burj Khalifa. Our reservation was at 6:30PM and we were out on the balcony with a bird's eye view of the fountains (well 2nd floor!) We relaxed, had some wine and watched the fountains "perform" while the sun set. We finally ordered and had dinner. Dinner was OK, definitely not worth what I'm sure we paid, but I knew we were paying for the view...location, location, location!
When I made our reservation, I told them it was Mitchell's birthday and they said they would prepare a special dessert for him. I had no idea what it would be. He kept asking for birthday cake and I told him to be patient, something "special" was coming! They finally brought out a large white serving tray with a bowl of vanilla mousse covered in cocoa powder. On the white tray, they had spelled out "Happy Birthday Mitchell" in chocolate syrup and had a candle stuck to the tray! We all sang Happy Birthday and then he dug into his dessert. We all helped a little and then we started using our fingers to wipe up the chocolate syrup. By the time we were all done, it looked like a mad 2 year old had finger-painted all over the tray!
After dinner, we wandered back through the mall to the car....it was a LONG walk after a LONG day! We didn't make it home until after 9:30 PM....we were officially at the mall for about 10 hours! UGH! Luckily Mitchell's birthday only comes once/year!
On Friday, we pretty much relaxed (skipped church) because we were so exhausted from the festivities from the previous day! Finally that afternoon we got up the energy to head back down to the Dolphinarium at Creek Park. We went to the seal/dolphin show. They tried to make it part Cirque du Soleil but one of the acts was a bit too suggestive (even for my taste) and there were tons of kids in the audience. The funniest part was when the people in animal costumes came out to do a dance and we all looked at each other when we realized the "humping bunny" from our double-decker bus ride was part of the show! Now THAT's entertainment!
After the show, we wandered around the park a bit and checked out the other things in and around the park including a Children's Museum, a moonwalk area, a playground and even a cable car! We decided to save most of things for another day and we headed back to the car and to Festival City Mall (because we are officially CRAZY!) I really wanted my mom to see that mall because it's close to my office and I go there for lunch and shop there every so often. She likes being able to visualize where I am when I tell her about my comings and goings! I had also promised Mitchell he could play in one of the hamster ball rides at the mall play area. The hamster ball ride at this mall was more a long, cylindrical balloon/tube with ties on each end where the kids climb in and was about 6 ft tall. He had to climb up the inside walls to make the large apparatus turn in the water. After that, we had dinner and headed home. Another long exhausting day! (Are you seeing the pattern here?!?!?!)
On Saturday, I had to start packing for my trip to Brussels...very sad! We hung out at the apartment most of the day and relaxed until it was time to be picked up for our Arabian Desert Safari! We were picked up in a land cruiser and whisked away on our adventure. After about an hour ride packed in the car, we stopped to meet up with the rest of the groups. Once everyone arrived (about 20+ land cruisers) we headed out to the desert! We stopped shortly after driving into the desert to take some pictures. The sand was a dark orange color, similar to the red clay of west Texas, and very fine. We found it easier to walk around without our shoes on. The drivers took the tires down to 15 pounds of air pressure and we were OFF to BASH SOME SAND DUNES!!! OMG!!! It was absolutely CRAZY! We were driving over sand cliffs and on the sides of sand cliffs, up and down, here and there. It constantly felt like the car was going to roll over. I kept my hands braced on the roll bars mounted INSIDE the cab of the land cruiser! Mom turned a little green. Mitchell kept letting out whoops of excitement and didn't want it to stop! Chad was in the front seat, possibly the scariest spot in the whole vehicle because he could see what we were about to do while the rest of were mostly (and thankfully) surprised at each and every turn.
We finally stopped to take some pictures of the sunset and play in the sand dunes. Mitchell made some friends and was running up and down the dunes...which is exhausting by the way! Unfortunately, the dune bashing was far from over! We all piled back into the cars and off we went each turn more terrifying than the next! Where was the CAMP?!?!? We were supposed to be stopping at a camp!!! We finally made it to the camp around dusk. They had camel rides and snow boards for sand surfing outside the camp. Mitchell and I tried them both. Mitchell was a natural at sand boarding so we may just sign him up for snowboard classes this summer at Ski Dubai!
We headed into the large camp area that had a square elevated stage in the middle surrounded by low tables with pillows as chairs. Surrounding the camp were some carpeted rooms with additional tables, some Sheesha pipes for all to try. Chad, Steve & I tried it and it was OK, nothing too special if you ask me! Basically like inhaling fruit flavored smoke. It smells a lot better than it tastes. After about 30 minutes they started serving appetizers over at the grill area to tide us over until the BBQ dinner was served. A belly dancer performed and she was very good (not that I have much experience in judging skills of belly dancers.) At one point in her show she came close to our table and was teasing Mitchell asking him if he was married. He was totally embarrassed. Partway through the show, I got up and wandered around the camp because there was supposed to be henna painting. I had a henna artist draw a design on my foot. I took mom to do the same a little while later.
After the belly dancer finished, a tandura dancer came out. I had never heard of this type of show but it was basically a man wearing bright yellow go-go boots, a pastel yellow dress and two ornate patchwork skirts over the dress. He stood on a 4' x 4' wooden square and started spinning in circles twirling the skirts into different patterns. He never once lost balance and he spun for over 15 minutes (I'm not exaggerating!) When he was done, he was sweating like a pig but walked a straight line on the stage. Next, he invited different audience members to try and, as you can imagine, they spun for about 30 seconds and then about fell over. One poor drunk guy spun the longest and then proceeded to fall off the stage onto someone's table. Next time I saw him he had a large bandage on his leg. Just one more lesson in Dubai...don't drink and DANCE!
After the performances, we were all starving! Just then, they opened the BBQ buffet! Perfect timing! The buffet was a spread of different types of grilled meats, salads, hummus, rice and flatbread. We were pleasantly surprised that it was so good considering we were out in the middle of nowhere!
After dinner, Mitchell played with some kids on the stage and then went back out and did a little more sand surfing until it was time to leave the camp around 9PM. Luckily we didn't have too far to go over the dunes before we got to a real road or we would have all probably lost our delicious dinners! We didn't get home until about 10PM and Mitchell had school the next day and I had to be up around 5AM to catch an 8am flight to Brussels.
The desert safari was a wonderful ending to a fabulous visit with my parents! I really hated to leave knowing they would be gone when I got back!
