Our Arabian Night

We arrived in Dubai after a 15 hour direct flight. The wide variety of movies, games, television shows, and excellent service made the long flight bearable. What we could have done without was the screaming babies. Thank goodness for noise blocking headphones.

At the terminal we patiently waited for our checked bags. After about 25 minutes and noticing that almost nobody from our flight was actually collecting luggage, Simon asked an attendant if we were at the right place. It turned out that when we checked in at LAX they neglected to tell us that we would not receive our checked bags until we arrived in Dar es Salaam the next day. So off we went with only our carry on backpacks for the night. Day one and I'm already being forced to wear the same clothes two days in a row.

Having our bags meet us in Tanzania ended up working out well. Our flight did not arrive in Dubai until after 7pm and we thought we may not make it to Burj Khalifa once we checked in at the hotel to drop of our bags and then went out again. Without the large bags we were able to go straight there. We searched out the ticket counter and bought our tickets to the observation floor. Of course, immediate entry tickets were quadruple the price of a reserved ticket. Since our only other option was to forego the opportunity to enter the tallest building in the world, we sucked it up and paid. We still are not 100% sure what the cost was in dollars and prefer to keep it that way. Even though it was dark, so views were somewhat limited, it was still worth it. The elevator that wisks you up 124 floors takes less than a minute and you can hardly feel it moving. My ears popping was the only sign of how high up we were going. We took in the views and I was also pleasantly surprised to find a fabled gold bar vending machine just inside near the gift shop. I wasn't quite sure whether I should believe Simon when he told me about these before our trip. They do indeed exist!

Driving through the city, it almost felt like we were still in the US as we passed Starbucks, Subway, Pizza Hut, and Tony Roma's among many other American stores and restaurants. We were grateful that almost every sign was also written in English. We'd have no clue what any of the Arabic signs meant. As Simon commented about the "Stop" sign in Arabic..."It looks more like two men sitting in a canoe than the word 'stop' to us."

Our hotel for our one night was not bad. It was spacious enough and clean. We were pleased with it until the nightclub below us started the music for the night. It was pretty difficult to sleep with the base vibrating the walls especially when we hadn't adjusted to our new timezone and so were basically trying to go to sleep at 11am. After a sleepless night, we headed back to the airport. There, we also considered purchasing one of the $45,000 gold plated cell phones. Seriously, who arrives at the airport and thinks, "I'd like to buy a phone made of gold today."

Next stop...Tanzania!