Dubai

Last weekend we spent a couple of nights in the 'City of Gold', Dubai.  The main reason being that we had to renew our Kuwait visitor visa for another three months and we thought we may as well see the place while we're over this side of the world. You hear so much about it these days and I was keen to see the 'famous' sights.

We set off on the morning of Good Friday and the journey went really smoothly as Kuwait airport was really quiet! Dubai airport was much busier but we got to the hotel at about 2pm, just in time for check-in. As we pulled up at the hotel I though we'd been brought to the wrong place and thought so even more when we walked in...it looked far too posh for what we'd paid!!  We were then put on the 'Exectutive Floor' which we realised as we got in the lift up to our room.  That was a good start...the room was lovely.  We spent that afternoon at the pool then went into downtown Dubai to see the Burj Khalifa after eating in the largest mall in the world.  The Burj Khalifa is the largest building in the world and it was amazing to see.  Quite surreal really.  We were able to go right to the bottom of it and looking up was bizarre, it just went on and on.  The building was on a man made lake surrounded by restaurants and hotels and there was a fountain show to music which was very impressive. Again the 'world's largest' musical fountain show. Do you notice a theme in Dubai??! lol

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Illuminated by 6,600 lights and 25 colored projectors, it is 275 m (902 ft) long and shoots water up to 500 ft (152.4 m) into the air accompanied by a range of classical to contemporary Arabic and world music.^[1] It was built at a cost of AED 800 million (USD 218 million).

We spent Saturday morning at the pool again then at Dubai Marina which is again very impressive with all the skyscrapers and gorgeous yachts. We went on a Dhow trip around the marina and ate there.  It was easy to spend a day just wandering around in the sun and people watching. There were loads of British people there for the Easter weekend.

We left on Sunday and I was disappointed we hadn't stayed longer.  There's so much to do in Dubai and it's a really nice place, really clean and everywhere is landscaped and well looked after. There's an excellent metro system too which made getting around the city really easy and cheap and compared to Kuwait it didn't seem like an expensive place at all which surprised us. It was a breath of fresh air compared to Kuwait. They know what to do with their money to make it a very visitable place. We were talking all weekend about what we'll do next time we go so we'd highly reccommend it :)

Burj Khalifa

Dubai Marina

Dhow trip

Dhow touring the marina

Approaching the marina

Private yacht and Burj Al Arab in the background - most luxurious hotel in the world.

relaxing in a traditional arabic cafe

Dubai Marina at night

Downtown Dubai

Atlantis Hotel