After a 7 hour flight through the night we finally arrived Friday 25th January - 5.30am local time (NZ 1.30pm NZ time). Much to everyone’s dislike I brought out my neck cushion for this flight and it was the best thing I ever did, I slept 90% of the way and arrived feeling ok although it was really cold. Apparently December to March is winter in Dubai – average temp. 20degrees so after Singapore we noticed the change in temperature.
We left for the hotel to find on arrival that they had booked us 2 twin rooms for 4 nights – no way said Deane – they had also forgotten to add an extra bed for Bri. After an hour traipsing around the hotel to try and get the rooms sorted they sent us for breakfast so the beds could be made up! We ended up with a double and triple room at opposite ends of the corridor, not ideal but it worked ok. We then went to our rooms and slept until 1pm. We were picked up at 2pm from the hotel for a 3 hour City tour – took us 2 hours to do all the hotel pickups and meet up with the other transit buses so it was 4pm before we even started. We started the main tour at the sail Hotel ( proper name???will have to look that up ) and headed back to the older part of Dubai where we were staying down by the Dubai Creek (more like a river tho). We saw the indoor ski field from the outside only. We travelled past the Sheiks palace and saw a lot of the new construction sites and buildings, according to Sam’s trivia there is 80% of the worlds construction cranes in Dubai right now with the whole city being expanded hugely to produce income for the future, as according to our tour guide all the oil in Dubai will have gone within 10 years. We continued through the city visiting a mosque and various other buildings and ended up on a water taxi ride to the other side of the creek to the Spice and Gold markets. It was dark by now but it was really interesting and again, just like Singapore there were people from India everywhere. The tour finished around 8pm and we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast so by the time we finished we were famished, we headed around the corner from our hotel and found a local pizza place, which was to become Zach’s favourite meal in Dubai and a regular place for him to pop down to collect his pizza for dinner at night on the way home from the internet cafe!!! He became a regular at the restaurant and the guy who owned it enjoyed looking out for Zach either by himself or with us each day. Deane and the boys went out daily to buy bottled water as you wouldn’t have a clue where it was supplied from in the hotel.
