End of Vacation

What a great 2 weeks with my Mom, Dad and Amy!  It went by so fast, but I am so glad that they came and that I got to spend time with them!

Me at the Al Ain National Museum

The end of our vacation was nice and relaxing in Al Ain, a trip to Dubai for church, and then to Abu Dhabi to be near the airport.  We went to the Al Ain National Museum, Al Ain Oasis, and Al Ain Paradise Gardens on Thursday.  Although it sounds like a busy day it was actually quite nice.  We started at the National Museum and saw a lot of old, really old, stuff.  This country is extermely old.  Although it's only been united for 40 years people have lived here for a long time.  It was very informative.  I especially liked seeing what Al Ain looked like in the 60s and 70s.  It has changed a lot! 

Date palm trees in the
Al Ain Oasis

The National Museum is right by the Al Ain Oasis so we went there after touring the museum.  The oasis is beautiful, but totally different than I expected.  I expected to see lots of green (which I did; I think there are over 5,000 date palm trees there), and water.  I didn't see any water. That's because the oasis is watered by underground irrigation called "falaj".  We could see the troughs that take the water, but no water.  It was weird.  Another interesting fact is that all the land in the oasis is owned by private individuals who planted the date palm trees.  I thought it was owned by the government.  We drove through the oasis.  Another weird thing.  I thought we would have to walk, but it was nice to drive.  Even though I had to stop driving and let my dad finish because we ran (not literally) into another car and needed to back up to let it pass.  I don't back up well, especially on narrow roads so I let Dad do the driving! 

Amy and I at the Paradise Gardens

After driving through the oasis for a bit we decided to go home so they could get the laundry done and packing done.  We would head to the Al Ain Paradise Gardens at night when it cooled down.  I didn't want Mom to see any more purple spots!  So I got some more job applications in (South Lyon, 2 in Missouri, and 1 in Iowa) while they packed and finished up laundry.

At about 5 we headed to the garden.  It's in the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest number of hanging pots.  I can't remember how many excatly, but it's in the 1000s.  It really is quite impressive and beautiful.  We walked around a bit enjoying the fragrance of the flowers and the cool night before deciding that we were hungry. 

Mom was tired of going to the mall (can't say as I blame her:) so we headed home and looked for a restaurant on the way home.  Amy spotted Al Rawdha and we had a nice Arabic dinner there. 

Since everyone was packed and ready we played some more cards.  It was a nice day!  A great way to finsih our vacation in Al Ain!

We got up early Friday morning and loaded the car.  I think it was a bit easier to do this time since I didn't have my 3 bags to add to the mix.  We then drove to Dubai for church and had a nice lunch with the Wilsons before heading to Abu Dhabi.  I had a headache and wasn't feeling good; I think it was emotional stuff with it being the last day of the time spent with my family, so I went to bed early; plus we had to get up at 3am in order to be at the airport by 4.  I didn't get much rest, but my headache went away.  We got up at 3 and were on the road by 3:40.  Not bad!  Early, but not bad for 4 people to be ready in 40 minutes.  No showers.  I got them to the airport by a little after 4, we said our goodbyes knowing that I would see them in July, and then I headed back to Al Ain so I could get some rest and take a shower.

So they are on their way to London and I have to get some cleaning done, take the laudry in, return the car, and get ready for work tomorrow.  I have my lessons done, but I do need to review them and get resources.  Not too much work, but I would rather be headed to London!!

Back to the real world.

Dubai and Al Ain

The rest of our trip in Dubai was quite eventful.  We did lots more sight seeing, took a dhow dinner cruise, and the Big Bus Tour of Dubai.

flamingos at RAK wildlife sanctuary

Sunday was our day for the dhow dinner cruise so we had the morning and afternoon to tour by ourselves and relax.  We didn't just want to stay at the hotel so we ventured out to the Ras Al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary.  The drive there wasn't that bad, other than the fact that I went the wrong way on Emirates Road and we ended up in Sharjah.  Well, that's one more emirate that my visitors got to see!  OK not sure you can call it "see" but we were there:)  I got myself turned around and headed in the right direction, which can be quite difficult in the UAE.  The sanctuary was quite different from what I was expecting.  Evidently there are 4 "hides" and we only saw one.  I wasn't sure how to get to the other ones and we didn't feel like driving around getting lost (too much of that on this trip:).  So we just walked the short trail that led to the hide and looked at flamingos.  It was pretty neat!  There were a lot of flamingos, and one of the guys there showed me how to take pictures through the telescope.  I had no idea you could do that!  He took some pictures as well, so I have quite a few pictures of close up flamingos.  After we looked at the flamingos for a bit we headed back to the car.  We weren't quite ready to go back to the hotel so we decided to do some more exploring.

We ended up at the Jumeriah Grand Mosque.  It's a pretty nice mosque, nothing like Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, but nice.  I liked the brown color of the mosque.  We arrived during prayer time, so we couldn't go in the mosque, but we did walk around the grounds.  They have a cultural experience there, but only at 10 am and since we're not early starters we missed it.  Oh well. 

After the mosque I wanted to try to find the Jumeriah Souq so we headed out to Jumeriah Road, but I couldn't find that either.  We ended up on Al Wasl Road.  I took that for a while until we got to Jumeriah Road and I saw a sign for the souq.  I saw a sign, and only a sign.  I followed the one sign that I saw, but we never quite made it to the souq.  We had enough of driving and not finding anything so we went back to the hotel where we could rest and relax before our dinner cruise.

Dubai at night

Tour boats on the Arabian Gulf

The dinner cruise was great.  It was a wonderful night, not too hot and not too cold.  It wasn't windy like it was in Abu Dhabi either.  We were picked up from our hotel around 6:45 and we arrived early to the boat so we got to enjoy the atmosphere before the boat left.  The cruise along the creek was fantastic.  Nice views of Dubai at night along with great food!  This one was much better than the one in Abu Dhabi.  I am so glad that my parents and Amy got to experience a nice dinner cruise!  Part of the cruise was even out on the open water of the Arabian Gulf.  Quite neat.  It was actually very dark there.  The lights of the city weren't nearly as evident when we got out on the Gulf.  The dinner cruise was a great way to end our day!

Boats on the creek

Monday was our day for the Big Bus Tour so we got up early and headed to Festival City.  I knew there was a stop there and it was close to the hotel so that's why I chose that location.  The only problem was there wasn't really a stop.  It was just a shuttle service to one of the other stops.  I had no idea where Wafi was so we stayed and waited at Festival City for an hour.  We finally started the actual tour around 10:30 instead of 9:00 like we wanted, but at least I didn't have to do the driving!  Well, other than to Festival City and finding parking which was near the main entrance was quite an ordeal, but no more driving through the city of Dubai!  Once we started the tour we saw some pretty historical and informative sights: The Dubai Museum and fort, Sheikh someone's house, the old souq, and finally Atlantis.  We had seen many of the tourist attractions independently so we didn't need to get off at many stops so we were able to spend more time at the Dubai Museum and old souq.  The Dubai Museum does a great job of laying out and presenting the history of the UAE and Dubai in a pictorial manner.  We all found it quite interesting.  Even though I had been there before I still enjoyed the visit.  I really like the museum:) 

The sheikh's house was confusing.  I think it would have been much more informative if there were clearly labeled signs of what you were looking at and of where to go.  We had a hard time even finding the entrance.  We ended up in the history of camels museum, which was neat, but not where we thought we were supposed to be.  I really like the souq, even though I don't typically buy anything.  It's just a different feeling and a different experience.  The shop owners (men) are trying to get the women to buy their shawls and handbags and jewlery and they will come right up to you and put the shawl in your face and try to get you to touch it and want to buy it.  It's just not something that everyone will get to experience.  We had a huge lunch at a restaruant on the creek prior to exploring the souq.  Since it was a chilly day I needed to buy a shawl, but I didn't like the ones where the men are pressuring you to purchase one so we walked for a bit and I found a little stall where no one was harassing me to buy a shawl.  I found one that I liked and tried to bargain, it was 55 dirhams and I offered 30.  He turned me down so we left.  We walked a bit further down and I found the exact same one and I again offered 30.  We bargained for a bit and I ended up paying 35.   Not bad.  That was the only purchase of the day.  After walking around the souq we took a water taxi ride to the other side and then promptly got on the water bus to take us back to the side where we could pick up our bus!  The water taxi is a little brown boat that costs 1 dirham to ride.  Again, it's another different experience.  The water bus was included in our Big Bus ticket and it's air conditioned so that's why we took that back to the other side.

Atlantis Hotel

Once we got back on the bus we rode it to the end of the red route so we could get on the blue route.  We needed to see Atlantis on the Palm and that was on the blue route.  Unfortunately we never got to see the palm.  I was looking forward to that.  I don't know if anyone else thought that we would see the palm, but I really wanted to.  We didn't get to see the palm because Atlantis is on the plam.  I thought we would have stopped prior to getting to Atlantis, but we didn't.  Atlantis is a cool hotel, but I wouldn't want to spend all that money for a nice hotel and have to deal with all the traffic that they have on the palm.  We got out and walked around the hotel for a bit and got something to eat and drink and then we boarded the bus again. 

After 9 hours on the bus we were ready to go home, but we had to stop at Cindy's to drop off the blankets, pick up the foam for Amy, and have some cake that Khulood bought for us.  I did the hour and fifteen minute drive in only an hour and five minutes!  I was ready to be home and in bed!  That was a long day:)

Jahili Fort

Back to Al Ain.  Our long days in Dubai wore us out so we were ready to relax and get some laundry and little things done.  We slept in and got some laundry done before heading out to the Jahili Fort and the Al Ain Palace Museum. 

Khanjar at the Palace Museum

The fort was very interesting.  There was a huge exhibit on this famous guy who lived with the Bedouin and travelled across the empty quarter two times.  Very informative and impressive!  The Palace Museum was neat, but not as interesting as the fort.


Our little bit of sight seeing was done for the day so we went back to the apartment so we could finish laundry and I had some applications to complete.  We spent the rest of the night at home and finished by playing some card games!

The plan for Wednesday was to get up early and get to the zoo before it got too hot.  Well, do you think that happened?!  The zoo opened at 9:00 and I wanted to be there soon after it opened, but we didn't get there till 10ish.  Oh well.  What difference was one hour going to make?  It was super hot.  What happened to the chilly, cloudy, hazy days we had in Dubai?  We walked around the zoo and saw a lot of the animals.  The gibbons were especially noisy today!  The big cat exhibit was disappointing, other than the 2 white tigers we didn't see many big cats just lots of empty cages.  I'm sure they were there just sleeping in the shade, doing what big cats do best.  After the zoo we attempted to find the Al Ain Oasis, but it wasn't in Freida (my GPS) and I couldn't find it.  There were a few signs, but none that really directed you right to it.  So we drove around for a bit trying to find that one, and the Qattara Oasis before heading back home so Mom could rest (get rid of the purple spots that she was seeing) and I could get some more applications finished and this blog done!  Yeah it's done:)  Well, almost.  We're heading out tonight to try to find the oasis and the paradise gardens so I know where they are for tomorrow.  We also need to stop by the heron round about so Amy can get a picture and I have to show them Jimi Mall!  I know I said I wasn't going to go there, but what else is there to do?!