So I never really planned this trip, my
dad just called me when we were on holiday with Linnea if I want to
go on holiday with him since he is on leave for a few weeks and
doesn't have much to do. First he made some suggestions like Tokyo or
the Philippines but a few days later he settled down with Dubai. He
choose Dubai (I was happy to go anywhere so I just said yes to any
suggestion) since the time difference is not big and he only had a
week to spare so the flight isn't that long.
So we were gonna fly to Dubai from
Brussels, since he lives in Belgium so first I had to fly to Belgium.
There was a little bit of trouble with that since I was gonna fly
there on Friday and to Dubai on Saturday but my flight to Brussels
was cancelled, what a good start for the trip. Normally it would be
no problem but I fly on stand-by tickets which I get from my dad
because he works for Qatar Airways. I ended up buying a ticket
HEL-BRU through London for Saturday which made me a bit nervous cause
I only had two hours to change planes in Brussels and recheck-in. No
problem here, all the flights were on time. Dubai here I come!
We arrived pretty late in the evening,
around 10 pm. The airport in Dubai was something crazy with it's
immensely high ceilings and bling all around. We went through the
passport control, picked up our bags and went to grab a taxi. The
first thing we noticed while going outside was the immense heat that
hits you like crazy coming from +15°C to +30°C at night. We went to
the taxi line and the guy guided us to another line we didn't want to
go to since it was more expensive so we wandered off. We asked a lady
for this taxi but she said this taxi is for women (minimum one per
taxi) so finally we found a normal taxi that took us to town.
The drive to our hotel didn't take too
long, only around 10 to 15 minutes. Taxi's in Dubai are really cheap,
we ended up taking loads of them during our trip. We arrived at the
hotel after midnight, feeling really tired but too hungry to go to
bed. Luckily our hotel had a 24 hr restaurant so we could right away
get some food. I took a burger and my dad took a pizza. Good enough
to make it till tomorrow.
I woke up feeling pretty good, we both had our own rooms since my dad snores so bad (like a bear) I can't sleep in the same room with him so he took two rooms. The hotel was pretty cheap so it wasn't too bad to pay for two rooms. Well, at least not for me since my dad pays. Haha. I did my normal morning activities and we headed out to town. There was a free shuttle that took us to a mall from where we could take a metro downtown. Dubai is a really odd place when it comes to air conditioning. You can't avoid it anywhere. I mean it's a good thing since it was everyday over 40 degrees, sunny and totally no wind. But every single place is air conditioned, even 1/3 of all the bus stops! How ridiculous is that?! Also we took the metro to Dubai mall, a huuuge mall located about a kilometer from the metro station. You didn't have to go outside since there was a tunnel (obviously with aircon) that took you all the way from the station to the mall, how convenient is that!
It was also Ramadan (the holy month in Islam in which they fast from sunrise to sunset) so it was really difficult to find place to eat. At first we thought we could make it until sunset but nope. It was so difficult to find a place to eat I had to Google where to get some food. You could get some food at the mall but not eat in so it made it kinda difficult. Eventually we ended up in Nando's, a famous chain for chicken. It was located inside an international hotel and totally covered so you couldn't see people eating before you went inside. We had a nice meal and probably a million cokes to get us pumped full of liquid until sunset.
After eating we decided to head out and check out the Dubai Marina, a luxurious district full of skyscrapers located on the south side of the city. The metro got us there easily, but the ride was rather long. Dubai isn't built too smartly, since there are districts located a bit here and there because the city is just being built and built apparently without any further planning. But back to the point, the Marina is a rather beautiful place but you can't do shit there. I mean you can walk around the water and see some skyscrapers but that's it and they dare to call it a tourist attraction. Haha. By accident we found a nice 51st floor bar by accident since my dad had to go to the restroom and everything was closed we ended up inside the Marriot hotel and the views from up high were rather nice, but Dubai is crazy polluted. Up there we should have normally been able to see the Palm but we could barely see it. What a shame. The other shame was that a beer cost 10€ during happy hour and a soda 5€?! We also stayed to see the sunset, we thought is was gonna be pretty from up there but it's probably THE worst I've ever seen. The sun was just going down and in a flash it just disappeared behind a huge cloud of smog.
We left after sunset to get some food. By this time all the restaurants were open and serving so we had plenty of choice. Dubai is a paradise for food (except during ramadan hours) you can find just anything from anywhere around the world. We decided to go to a Korean restaurant close to our hotel. We just ordered half the menu and everything that the waitress recommended since we didn't really know what to order. We had shrimp, meat, veggies, rice and just about everything that exists. The food was really good and not even too expensive on Dubai standards. We were so exhausted from the heat we decided to call it a day even though it wasn't even too late yet, but the next day new adventures await us!
I did this trip already a little while ago, but as Linnea has said already I'm doing my military service at the moment so I don't have too much spare time to write or if I have a little time I'm often really exhausted. The army has been pretty cool until now, of course it's a huge change in our lives but we'll manage just fine. 139 days to go and then I'm free. Enjoy the summer, greetings from the barracks. We'll keep you up to date!
Arno
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