Just got back from my almost 5 week whirlwind adventure to Dubai, Israel, Jordan, Greece, Croatia, and Montenegro! From flights, to hotels, to boats, to a crazy amount of walking I don’t even know where the time went. It feels so strange to be back in Texas, but I am going to do my best to retell everything that happened.
Leaving Dallas
The original flight plan was kinda crazy due to the amount of places I was visiting, using points, and trying not to pay too much out of pocket. I normally don’t advise a lot of layovers, but it couldn’t be helped in this situation. I was supposed to fly DFW > JFK > AMM > DBX, however there was a storm at JFK which caused me to miss the connection. Long story short, booked a totally new last minute flight on Emirates for JFK to DBX…. but missed that it was for 11am, not 11pm. Discovered the mistake at 2pm… another $400 later I am re-re-booked for the 11pm flight from JFK. It was a wild 24 hours.
Landed in Dubai a day late and about $2k poorer, but I made it! Fortunately I complained to AA about the weather issues with the initial flight and got my points back (so it looks like another trip is in the works). Because I lost a day I had to move some tours and bookings around. The tickets for the Burj Khalifa unfortunately had to be scrapped and I lost the money on those, but I was refunded for cancelling a full day tour of Abu Dhabi. I’ll just have to add it onto the list for next time. I got into Dubai in the evening so after a quick dinner down the street from my hotel I went to bed exhausted.
Dubai: Day 1
Woke up, got ready, and made my way to the meeting point for my walking tour of Dubai. It was the beginning of May so even though Dubai had not reached peak temperatures, it was already about 92 degrees Fahrenheit in the morning. I loved this tour, but would NOT suggest a walking tour in the summer. In fact, just avoid Dubai after mid-May until the fall. It will be miserable. Our tour guide Muhammad led us through essentially the Disney re-make version of Old Town Dubai. For those who don’t know, Dubai is essentially a brand new “state” (Emirate) in the UAE. It was built in the mid-1980’s which means all of the infrastructure is new, designed well, and with tons of funding. This section we toured was new, but made to look old to give you an idea of what some random few people lived in a long time ago. Interesting, but not actually very accurate.
Muhammed, while showing us around, also gave us a bunch of fun facts about Dubai and Arabic culture in general. We discussed how Dubai has no taxes, most people are ex-pats, it is illegal to be homeless, your jobs pays your salary to the government and then the government pays you, most people will never be actual citizens of Dubai, men are allowed to have four wives however that is quite expensive, people still trade in camels, and so many other interesting tidbits.
After we toured the “old” area, we took these little boat taxis down the river to our next stop, the Gold Souk. Every stall was filled with scarves, tchotchkes, perfumes, jewelry, etc. Most of the had similar items, but then there were also actual jewelry stores FILLEDDDDD with gold of anything you could ever imagine. I spent a lot of time wandering those stores, yet resisted the temptation to buy anything. However, once we got to the Spice Souk, I couldn’t resist any longer and managed to buy 10 year’s supply of saffron. Way more my speed than some gold bangle bracelets. I also bought nowhere near enough of these delicious chocolate covered filled dates. I’m obsessed. I’m going to need a date connection for back in the states. I ended up buying even more at the airport at the end of the trip because I knew I hadn’t bought enough. The limit does not exist.
After our tour I needed to kill some time before the next event so I decided to check out the famous Dubai Mall. It was very nice, but not quite what I expected. Dallas does malls and aquariums very well, so the mall/aquarium/restaurant/ice skating rink were not as impressive as I wanted them to be. If you live in a small town and don’t normally go to malls I am sure it’s astounding, but I live down the street from multiple amazing malls so it didn’t really do it for me. I was fairly amazed though by how “westernized” all of the food court options were though. I love to look at the McDonalds menu in any country I visit to see what is different. They did have this new Passion Fruit Sprite that I had to try and it was quite good.
After the mall and aquarium I headed to the Dubai Marina to get on my next tour, a night dinner cruise through the Marina. I really liked this except for the hysterically crying toddler that these very clueless parents did not know how to handle. Do I sound like someone who doesn’t have children? Yes, because I don’t. However, I have baby-sat and nannied my fair share and know when parents are just being lazy. A night time dinner cruise on a yacht is not the place for a baby or toddler, I think we can all agree. They finally decided after an hour of crying to take the baby down below and everyone else was relieved. The cruise was wonderful, the lights of Dubai are amazing, and (sans baby) was a wonderful time. I was exhausted at this point and went back to the hotel ready to collapse before the next day’s activities.
Dubai: Day 2
I woke up early to prepare for my morning on the sand dunes. My tour picked me up bright and early (and hot) from my hotel. There was already another couple in the car and we picked up one more couple before heading off to the desert. It was actually technically in the next Emirate, not Dubai. Dubai is not that big and most people are not citizens. Ninety percent of inhabitants are expats ranging from Pakistan, India, the US, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Our tour guide was from Pakistan and had lived in Dubai for a long time so he was a wealth of knowledge and very happy to share about Dubai.
Our first stop was for us to do a quick camel ride and for one of the couples to ride in a dune buggy. This part of the stop could have been skipped in my opinion as it took quite awhile even though the camel ride was about 5 minutes. While we waited the guide got the car ready for the dunes. After the other couple got back from the dune buggy ride we headed off into the sand.
The sand dunes were pretty fun, but I think if we had music playing it would have been better. It was quite quiet in the car so that was a little weird, but it was fun and I was very grateful to have not yet eaten that morning as it was quite bumpy. We drove for a bit with some other cars that were also part of the tour and then stopped on a big dune to take some pictures and to sand surf. One of the cars got stuck in the sand so all of the other drivers helped him get out while we took pictures in the desert. Again, would not suggest this in the dead of summer, but it was pleasant in early May.
In Dubai you will get a ticket for having a dirty car so immediately after finishing our sand dune time we pulled over into a gas station/souvenir shop for our guide to air blast the car for loose sand as well as us since we had been running all over the dunes. We had a nice little water break then hopped back into the clean car to be dropped off at our respective hotels.
After a quick shower and nap I headed back out to Dubai Marina to see some more sights. There is a very lovely public beach there so I got some sushi and spent some time on the beach. It was a nice way to wrap up Dubai before heading to Israel.
Keep reading to see where I went next 🙂
-Savvy