Weekend Break to Dubai

We set off for Dubai on the 7pm flight on Friday. There was another family from Conor's school making a bolt for it too.

We stayed at the Jumeirah Beach hotel which was enormous. It was in a great location, very close to the things we wanted to do. On the left is the view from our window of the Burj Al Arab hotel. You can see Ian waving from our hotel window (see right) - 13th floor.

On the Saturday we headed off to the Wild Wadi water park. http://www.wildwadi.com/ The hotel provided buggy carts as transport around the area and a free transfer to the park was advertised. We jumped in the buggy and were deposited about 200 yards away! If we'd have only known we really would have used our legs! We spent the whole day being thrown around water chutes in inflatable tyres, except for the times when we floated down the lazy river.

Richard and Adriana Williams and their 2 girls have just moved to Dubai and they met up with us at the water park. It was lovely to see them because it's been about 3 years since we last met up. Adriana lent me her car and driver so I could get across town to my beloved Gap and I had a glimpse of expat life in Dubai - very different to Mumbai! The main difference is the sheer number of expats in Dubai. Here in Mumbai it's difficult not to know everyone! There it would take you a whole year just to meet the fellow Brits.

We managed to pack lots in to our break: Dinner at a fantastic tapas restaurant with some excellent sangria with the Williams, boat trips along the waterways of the Madinat hotel http://www.madinatjumeirah.com/ , desert safaris, shopping in the mighty Mall of the Emirates, but best of all was our trip to Ski Dubai!! incredibly, there is an indoor ski centre inside the mall of the Emirates with chair lift, a couple of slopes, alpine lookey-likey cafe and some great snow created every night and maintained at -4 degrees C. We enjoyed ourselves so much. the chair lifts allowed for great views of our fellow skiers - a couple of Australians (I think) had obviously never been skiing but were quite prepared to tackle the expert slope. They spent most of the time on their bottoms but their laughter was infectious. For some reason known only to him Ian had to wear his sunglasses for the duration. Apparently the indoor snow was blinding.

The Ski Dubai experience made us realise how much we had missed not going skiing this year, so we're going to make a big effort next spring to get back.

Ian and Conor managed some down time in the hotel games room.