First venture into Dubai

It's been awhile since our last post, so I'll try and bring everyone up to date on the recent Burgess activities. So....where do I begin? Let's see, among other things, we rented a car for a few days, went to Dubai, explored the tallest mountain in the UAE, the girls had their first day of school, and we enjoyed a fabulous dinner with some neighbors.

But it's late, and I don't want to bore you with a ridiculously long post, so I'll focus on our recent trip to Dubai tonight.

Let me just say, the renting of the car thing was so liberating I could hardly contain myself. You never realize how much you depend on a vehicle until you don't have one for a few weeks. We have a reliable taxi driver on speed dial, and it's inexpensive (DUH, gas is crazy cheap), but it's not the same. Once we were in the car (we're free!), we took off for a drive to Dubai to visit the Ikea store. It's about 140 kilometers away...isn't the metric system a pain in the but? Anyway, it's about an hour and fifteen minute drive, and is quite pleasurable. The amazing thing about the drive that kind of surprised me a bit was the beauty of it. The drive is mostly desert but the color of the sand is what struck me. It's not the khaki/beach color sand I was expecting. It was a beautiful reddish color that honestly reminded me a bit of good old red Texas clay. When the wind kicked up and moved the sand a bit, it had a beautiful wave that the sun reflected and was quite amazing.

Approaching Dubai

On our ride in we slowly started seeing the skyline of one of the most amazing cities in the world. Obviously it's dominated by the Burg Khalifa, the tallest building in the world at over 2700 feet! INSANE!

Another shot of the Burg Khalifa

Thankfully we had GPS in our rental and it led us directly to the Ikea store. Considering people rely more on landmarks as a general way of getting around, as opposed to the useful house/bldg number and street name, GPS is seriously the only way to go.

What we didn't know about the Ikea store in Dubai is that it's anchored to Festival City Mall which is CRAZY big. Apparently they don't know how to make a small mall in the UAE as even the 3 we have in Al Ain are massive. Anyway, we spent most of the evening browsing the store and picking up some home essentials we were desperately lacking.

We spent a few hours shopping in Ikea, followed by another couple of hours in the Festival City mall. I know we mention going to the mall quite often, but it literally is like the hub for everything in the UAE. Want a cell phone? Mall. Cable TV/Internet? Mall. Groceries? MALL. Sounds crazy, but it's pretty darn convenient, especially when you don't have a car! 

We enjoyed some Falafel's for dinner at this awesome place in the foodcourt named Just Falafel. Those things were amazing! I'm still shocked that the girls ate them, and actually enjoyed them. We'll definitely go back again. 

We had fun in Dubai and we can't wait to visit again soon! Hopefully we'll get more pics next time.

Stay tuned for more, including some videos!