Day 3: Arabian Adventures Sundowner Safari

We decided not to set an alarm on Monday.  We ended up sleeping in until 1:30 pm.  Guess we needed the sleep.  We were picked up from our hotel by our desert guide Arrafat.  He was from Egypt.  He took us to the Palace grounds....Sorry no pictures.  You are not allowed to photograph any government buildings in Dubai.  We arrived at the Royal Family's Desert Nature Conserve and the first stop was to see a Falcon hunt!  We got to see a Falcon named Summer and her trainer from South Africa.  We learned about how Bedouins used Falcons to hunt, and then would release them in the Summer months because it gets too hot for them to survive in Dubai in the Summer. 

After the Falcon Show, we got to go for a drive on the dunes.  It was fun the first couple of minutes, but then I was done!

We got to have some free time to play on the dunes.  It was really a lot of fun, and of course Audry and Sophia had to do some tumbling!  We also got some great sunset pics.  Our driver Arrafat wrote our names in the sand for us in Arabic!

We went to a bedouin village and rode camels, one gave Amelia a smooch, ate a delicious feast, watched some belly dancing, and got Henna tattoos!  The girls got to hold an owl!

Day 2: Burj Khalifa, Dubai Mall, and Swimming in the Persian Gulf.

We got up and decided we would walk to the Burj Khalifa which is the tallest building in the World.  This was a mistake since they are doing so much construction around Dubai.  It took forever to get there.  It is really neat.  We took a high speed elevator which got us to the 124th floor in 90 seconds.  We spent some time on the observation deck, I was disappointed that we couldn't see the palm island because it was a little hazy.  We were able to see the Burj Al Arab, and the World islands though.

We spent some time in the Dubai Mall having lunch and looking around.  It is the biggest Mall I have ever seen.  We spent 2 days there and probably still missed a lot of it.  After lunch we decided to go swim in the Persian Gulf.  It was not what I expected.  It was just your average beach, including Jelly Fish.  One interesting thing was that the women swim fully covered from head to ankles.  You could tell the tourists because they were the ones in their bikinis.

 





Day 1: Mall of the Emirates

We went to Dubai for Spring Break.  After a 14 hour flight we arrived in Dubai at night.  We stayed in a hotel near the airport for the first night.  It was interesting to be woken up at 4am by the Adhan.  In Muslim countries they have the Adhan or call to prayer 5 times a day.  We usually couldn't hear it over the noises of the city.  When we woke up the next morning we got a taxi to our hotel that we were planning to stay at closer into the new downtown part of Dubai.  We got upgraded to a three bedroom suite, it had a living room, kitchen, dining room, 4 bathrooms , and 3 bedrooms.  It was really nice.  The kids liked the fact that every day people came in and made the beds and did the dishes while we were gone.
                                     

We decided that we wanted to go to Ski Dubai in the Mall of the Emirates.  It gets really hot in Dubai in the Summer, so the fact that they have an indoor ski resort is kind of cool.  We had lunch at Cheesecake Factory and then played with a Gentoo(Lucifer) and a King Penguin(McFatty)  inside Ski Dubai.

Audry got to carry an egg on her feet!