holiday updates, continued
monday was a bit of a chill out day as really we were planning our side travels for later in the week and taking it a bit easy. in the afternoon we went to the hotel ratana for a swim which was lovely - it has bar stools in the hotel pool bar but we just swam around a bit and then laid out in the late afternoon sun. my favourite time of the day here is about 5-6pm to swim when its still so warm out but the sun is starting to go down (or alternatively 7-8amish in the morning before it gets too hot and you can just feel the air around you).
after swimming we went to a place my mum goes to a bit called food n fun, which seems in a way typical of the ‘general’ restaurants here. if it’s not western-style takeaway chains there seem to be a lot of these. they seem to cover most bases food-wise and often that means things might not be exactly what you expect. we ordered things though that we knew would be as expected (curry) and bread. it was in a different part of town than we had been before and next to a shisha bar which was all lit up. one part of the restaurant had these booths which had things like saloon doors at seated face level for privacy if women in abayas wanted to eat there. as we left people were walking in and out of the mosque next door and with the skinny roads of the neighbourhood it felt really local.
on tuesday we ventured down to abu dhabi with my mum. she had to go and work out at this school in baniyas, which is a less affluent outer suburb of abu dhabi. many of the people who live there are bedouins who have been brought in from the desert only in about the last 20-30 years. despite this being such a place full of money it is crazy that it’s only really been ‘settled’ in the way it is now since oil was discovered in the 60s. before that - you lived a nomadic life out in the desert with your camel.
the first stop on tourism train for the day was the great mosque. this is one of the few which allows tourists in and has recently had some work done on it. it is amazing, huge and pretty much made us both have a pseudo-spiritual moment. i had to wear an abaya and headscarf to go inside which was interesting as well - as soon as i turned around or got separated from darren he could hardly tell where i was. i would definitely be one of the women who has a pattern at the cuffs and on the hem of my headscarf or some other way of changing up a plain abaya - so easy to literally disappear into one. it was a lot cooler to wear than i expected and this is even with a long sleeved top and kneelength skirt underneath.
after this we basically had time to kill until we were going to swim and relax at the club, a british club/resort place my mum belongs to. so back to the mall it was and this time mall of the emirates for the rain showers they have there - however, much to my disappointment (and serious disappointment it was) the rain time has changed and we wouldn’t be able to stick around for that long. i’m still hoping - not very secretly i might add - that there will be a visit to abu dhabi next week where i can be there for the rain and thunder (4.30 and 8.30 now, not every few hours as previously imagined).
when my mum finished work we picked up a few things for the impending arrival of the nephew and niece from ikea (insert usual ‘i wish we had this in nz’ statement here) and then headed over to this fancy homewares store called the one that has a nice cafe in it for some lunch. late lunch worked a treat and then we headed out to the club.
i wasn’t sure what to expect from the club - glitz or the slightly more dated looking kind of thing there is a lot of here (easy to look dated due to all that sand don’t forget either). it was the latter but is very well appointed and i would probably want to join if we lived here - it has incredible range of facilities including a private beach, pool, several eating places, rock climbing, gym, tennis courts, sailing… all sorts. we laid on the beach, swam in both the beach and the pool, read, soaked up sun, ordered drinks on the beach (oh yeah, decadence!) and just enjoyed the heat. abu dhabi isn’t humid like dubai so it’s really nice, especially as the temperature seemed to have dropped to late 30s. in the evening we ate out on this kind of rock pier thing and then sadly had to leave and drive back to al ain.
wednesday was the start of our drive up north to check things out. we headed up to dubai first thing and decided to check out the mall of emirates with ski slope until the major heat of the day was starting to wane and we could check into our hotel. the ski slope is insane, huge and just so weird right by a food court! it’s 300 dirhams to go in there (about NZ$140ish) and it seemed packed. so far we’ve seen more ice and snow over here than at home - the count is 2 ice rinks and a ski slope so far!
we checked in to the hotel (a nice find, holiday inn express on jumeirah road by the dry docks) and met up with my friend sophie again for coffee at the one. the one in dubai is much lighter than in abu dhabi so it was nice to have sun filtering through the (tinted) windows. things are pretty dark here inside most of the time which i find hard to get used to - after all, nz summer means light automatically, right? the humidity in dubai really gets to me though. it’s not humid in al ain or abu dhabi. as soon as we went outside my glasses fogged up.
we had some time to kill before the evening’s entertainment so sophie suggested we head down to souk madinat, which is a shopping mall (surprise, surprise) but in a fort-like building complete with the old style wind chambers for cool air pre-air conditioning. very nice. it was on the water and people were catching abra water taxis around it as well but we kept on going and went back to try and catch our dhow dinner cruise.
we basically did the dinner cruise because a friend of my mum’s really recommended it and i think it is worth doing but buyer beware - you get what you pay for! there were some beautiful lit up dhow boats floating past our weirdly egyptian themed vessel and i don’t think they were getting the egyptian entertainment after dinner that we were - at least it was kind of hilarious, i guess. don’t go for a special price. go for something more expensive! have tranquility! it is very pretty out on the water and the food was awesome. after that sophie headed back to sharjah and we went to the hotel.
