Day: April 14, 2013

130412 Dubai

The flight from Paris is about 7 hours and we arrive at 6:30 in the morning.  We are welcomed in the arrivals hall before commencing immigration and customs procedures, by the agency Arabian Adventures who have arranged our time while in Dubai.  A driver is assigned to us and we are very pleased – plush leather and full comforts of an Audi A7.  With ease, we drift along the freeway towards our hotel in the Audi at 140kph.  Most other vehicles are doing the same speed but we feel safe. In the 7 lanes, smooth and level – no bumps.

Our hotel, the Bonnington JLT, is fairly new and the first skyscraper to contain both residential accommodation and a hotel.  The hotel is just 10 levels with a swimming pool/bar taking up the 11 level and then another 15 or so levels above that.  It is a 10-minute walk to the metro and a further 10 minutes or so to the beach.

In the afternoon, we catch the Metro to the Emirates Shopping Mall.  What a mall!   This is the mall that contains a ski slope with a 400 meter run.  Lots of up market shops.  We purchase some ‘stuff’ and have an Indian meal for a late lunch – the best we can remember for a long time.  The mall closes at 12 midnight but we don’t stay that long.  On the way home, we get in a carriage and a guy comes up to me and tells me to move to another carriage as the one we are in is for mothers and children only.  We had a lapse of what is expected in this culture.

After another broken sleep, we have breakfast and then make our way to the beach for a couple of hours of tanning before Australia’s winter sets in.  There are a lot of expatriates on the beach and tourists.  The watercraft are towing tourists all over the bay in or on, rather interesting tow behinds.

80% of the 1.88 million residents of Dubai are expatriates; there lots of Indians, Pakistanis, Filipino.  They do all the ‘menial’ tasks around the area such as cleaners, building laborers, drivers etc.

We get back to the hotel for our 3:30 Arabian Adventure Tour.  Not knowing what is going to happen, we are a little apprehensive, as we haven’t read the notes on what the tour includes.  Our vehicle, a leather upholstered Toyota Landcruiser, with all the extras and internal roll bars, turns out to be one of over 50 that do the adventure at a time, each with 6 passengers.  Somehow, we all turn up at the same point at approximately the same time to reduce tyre pressure to 15psi.

From here, we move to an outside theatre to witness a demonstration of a falcon attacking its prey.  They can swoop at up to 300kmph. From here, we move into 4WD and the drivers have time to show off their driving skills in the sand hills, and they surely do; slides sideways down a dune, flat out up a sand hill to a sharp peak and over.

After 15 minutes of Lyn screaming, we stop for photos and a breather.  I notice that all passengers have smiles on their faces as they get out of the vehicles.  We take the desert pictures and hop back in the Landcruiser for another 10 minutes and a stop to watch the sunset in the desert.  Then head to an area set up to provide us with dinner in tent like structures. Photos can be taken riding camels or holding falcons.  A belly dancer entertains us for 25 minutes.  One couple in our car is from near Yass are on their honeymoon with the next stops to be South Africa and the Mauritius – wow, how lucky!  The second couple is from Colombia and are on a holiday.  They may come to Australia to visit some day.

What a great night we have had – like little boys and girls enjoying rides at the show.  Amazing, really!  What a great way to end a trip away!

We get back to our room at 10:00pm to pack for the last time before our 6:55am pick-up in the morning for our transfer to the airport. Our flight is delayed but we pick up lost time by joining the Jetstream over near Bunbury to head into Melbourne.

I hope this trip has educated you in some part of the world where you would want to travel to.  Thanks for your interest and comments where they have been made.  Lyn is always ready for you to join us in a trip sometime soon.  We have a full group doing Africa in August and have made a group booking for Scandinavia with a cruise in the Baltic Sea in June 2014.  If you are interested in these or any other destination, please contact Lyn.

130411 Paris

I was going to include the rest of the trip in the one post, but what is to be told about our stay in Dubai is enough to have its own post alone.

After a 4-hour coach transfer into Paris from ” Scenic Emerald”, we arrive at the Radisson Blu Hotel where we stay for the next 2 nights.  I don’t know why, but I don’t feel like doing lots in Paris apart from what we had planned back in Australia.  We have been in Paris in 2010 prior to the cruise up the Rhine River from Amsterdam to Budapest, and the weather isn’t too encouraging to get out and about.  We wander around the renowned La Fayette Department Store.  Lyn prices some lovely jackets – at such a lovely price, they are still in the store.  While Lyn takes a look at the floor of shoes, I take time-out on a bench and on Lyn’s return, I get a sharp prod to wake; I had fallen asleep.

We return to our hotel for an early night.  In the morning after breakfast, we take a tour through ‘The Opera’, a well-known Paris landmark.  With over 20,000 visitors a day, it rivals the numbers going through the Vatican but at a cheaper price.  We find a nice ‘self serve’ restaurant for lunch with some warming soup and French bread.

For this evening, we have booked a dinner at the Eiffel Tower, followed by a 1-hour cruise on the Seine River that winds through Paris.  After the cruise, it is off to see the world’s longest running show “Moulin Rouge”.

If ever you want to go up Eiffel Tower, make a dinner booking and you will get preferential treatment in getting into the Tower lift for the ascent.  There would have been 50 individuals in the lift that made it up to the restaurant and then on up to the second of 3 viewing levels of the tower. Sitting at our table were 2 other couples, 1 from the USA and the other from Australia.  The couple from Australia works for Telstra in Canberra and were having their first trip to Europe and the UK.  The meal was a set menu and definitely NOT to Scenic Standard.  The cruise started at 8:00pm.  This enabled us to get some good photos of the light show on the Eiffel Tower on the hour with our iPhones.  The commentary was in 8 different languages and the one girl translated each one fluently.

Now the next part of the evening was what one might call a great routine in ‘eye-ball gymnastics’.  The Moulin Rouge is a fantastic show of outfits and talent.  We will never forget seeing one girl dive into a giant pool that came up through the stage with 6 or 8 giant snakes swimming with her – spine chilling.  Apparently, half the dancers are Australian so we felt relaxed about that.  The show went through to 1:00am and we have another tour leaving at 9:00am in the morning to the Palace of Versaille where French Royalty used as their residence years ago.  In season, the gardens would look something special.  We get back to the hotel, pack and wait for our transfer to Charles de Gaulle Airport for our flight to Dubai.