Our trip to Dubai.....

The kids and Brad had a week off of work and school due to the Hajj Eid. (remember we live in Arabia!) We decided to take a little adventure and drive to Dubai. We know several families who have driven it and didn't really want to spend money on plane tickets. It was about an eight hour drive through the desert but the roads were fine all the way!Google image of the city and also the Palm in the ocean where the Atlantis hotel sits. (no, we didn't stay there....just visited) It was amazing. All the land was filled with VERY high dollar real estate. It made us wonder who are all these people and how do they all have this much money. Evan ran into a friend outside the Atlantis....how random is that??Back to the beginning, we got up early on Friday and left about 4:30 in the morning. The sunrise was beautiful. We watched it rise over Hofuf.

We drove and drove and drove through nothing but sand for what seemed like forever. Really, just nothing for hours and hours. If we go again, we will pack more food. We weren't hungry but it was unnerving to see that nothing was available. We got through customs fine into the UAE then drove through lots more sand.....got to our hotel late in the afternoon. It was called the Golden Sands 10. It was a high-rise apartment building basically, nice and clean but no frills. It had two bedrooms and baths and a living area and kitchen. Whitney thought we should have stayed at a fancy hotel for just one night instead of the cheap on for four.....but we disagreed! (trust me our four nights here was a fraction of one night at most others!)

We spent our days shopping, going to museums, eating yummy food and seeing some movies. Rumor has it that Tom Cruise and the whole cast of the new Mission Impossible were in the mall at the same time as us. They are filming there. We didn't see them but the mall was buzzing about it. We saw Secretariet which was really good.

I took a picture of these workers because as we drove by it Evan said...."I used to have a Hot Wheel just like that but I never thought about putting people in it."

The highlight of Whitney's trip was Ski Dubai. It's an all indoor ski mountain with lifts and runs....just amazing. They provide all the equipment in the fee. She skiid for about three hours and loved every minute. Evan opted to use his money for something else since he's going to Switzerland in February to ski. And since he hadn't skiid before, he would have had to pay alot more to have the training class.

This water feature in the FestivalCity mall was cooler than the picture shows.

One night we went to Global Village. It's a big fair thing where vendors come from all over the world to sell their wares. Whitney got a henna on her arm from an African lady.

The biggest disappointment of the trip was not being able to go up in the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world. We waited until the last day and they were sold out of tour tickets. We did drive along side it and looked up. It is unreal how tall it is. That's a must if we ever go back.

We ate some yummy roasted corn from Global Village. Got up early Tuesday morning and headed home after a quick stop at McDonalds. Here are a few sights we saw on the ride home. Brad and I laughed later while looking at them that they didn't seem odd and they seem like they should! Traffic slowed down for this fellow. Luckily not many cars on the road. Can you imagine hitting a camel with your car??
The only stress of the trip was that Dubai is growing so fast that many highways were new and the GPS didn't recognize them. Brad did an excellent job of getting us around. I'll close with a quote by Whitney....."Dad, I'm sure if you wore a thobe and drove a BMW, you'd be more respected and less honked at!"