Day 18

When I looked out our window first thing this morning, it looked like it had been raining. That figures. It rains about seven days a year in Dubai, and we have the luck of being there not only during a sand storm (which is only about twice a year), but during a rain as well. I guess I can't complain. We've had some amazingly good weather on this trip. We went down to breakfast and see about our transportation to the water park. Leslie, the advance person in Dubai said she'd work out something. After we ate, we went back to check on the arrangements and Lynn, the tour leader said they arranged for a car to take us and wait for us. Jan started thinking about it, and figured it could add up to quite a bit of money for just a trip to the water park. We headed out to the city tour, the morning excursion, hoping for something more interesting than the long sit in the car we had yesterday. The "city tour" turned out to be a tour, not of the city of Dubai, but a mocked-up old city. It was mildly interesting, but I would have rather seen the real Dubai, which is not the old city by any means. We also went to the Dubai museum which is pretty cheesy for the amount of money they have available in that country. It was mostly mannequins and sound effects. I think they could have had real people demonstrating the crafts, and then sold them at the gift shop.

The next phase of the excursion was a short trip in a boat on the "creek". This is a waterway that has been dredged out and comes just a little ways inland. It's only used for commercial traffic; no pleasure boats, etc. There is a constant flow of dhows and abras (water taxis) up and down the creek. We got a pretty good view of the Dubai architecture along the water. There's an unbelievable amount of building in Dubai. You hear things like half the world's large cranes are here. It's easy to believe when you see the amount of construction underway. The hotels have to be soundproofed because there's a constant din from construction twenty-four hours a day. When I opened the sliding door on our balcony, I was struck by the noise immediately. The area around the creek seemed pretty quiet by comparison.

We ran into Lynn during the excursion and asked about the cost of the car. We decided it wasn't worth the trouble and expense and she offered to get us into high tea at the Burj al Arab. That sounded good to us, so we took her up on her kind offer. After the boat ride, we went back to the hotel, and had some time to rest before tea. We boarded the bus to the Burj al Arab and headed over. This was a seven course tea. We started wishing we hadn't eaten so much for lunch. The desserts at the hotel restaurant are excellent, though. I got a coffee mousse that was delicious. I wasn't very hungry, though. The Burj was just awesome. They have a gate to keep out the riff-raff, which ordinarily would be me. The lobby has a tiered jumping fountain, two escalators that go up two stories, and aquariums on either side that go all the way up and are filled with exotic looking fish. The interior of the lobby is open many stories high, and every detail is lavish and beautiful. Our tea was on the top floor, so we headed up in the elevator. It's called the twenty-seventh floor, but every room in the hotel is a suite and is two stories tall, so we were actually fifty-four stories high (give or take a story). We sat down to our tea and I had to try not to embarrass Jan. Formal occasions are alien to me. Our server came around offering tea. I'm not a real big hot tea drinker, but this was very good tea. Then they came offering scones. They didn't look like the scones I'm used to, and I didn't have high hopes they would be good, but the cream came by and the preserves, and I added them to my scone, and it was very, very good. Then she offered some finger sandwiches and I took a chicken sandwich. Then she offered some others and I took a little tuna sandwich. Finally came dessert, and I took a chocolate pastry. Everything was very tasty, but I didn't have room for anything else. After we finished, we decided we were going to cancel our dinner reservations because we couldn't eat anything else. We had a chance to enjoy the view from the top of the Burj for a little while before the tea was over. Pictures just can't do it justice. It was an impressive sight.

After tea we went to the Souk (a marketplace). It wasn't really a traditional marketplace, just like a mini-mall. We did find one store that was interesting-- Sinbad Antiques. They had a lot of stuff and the guys were friendly and willing to negotiate on the price. I have no doubt I was still taken advantage of, but it was fun anyway. Since we weren't going to dinner, we went back to the hotel and repacked for Tanzania. This is our last wheelie stop, and I had put all of our souvenirs into my wheelie and I had to rearrange things so I could put clothes in there. I didn't think it would work too well trying to wear papier mache boxes instead of pants. I stayed up as long as I could catching up on my blog and pictures, and then turned in.