First stop...Dubai

Rob and Brad’s Current Adventure

Friends and family know that we live to collect stories and have adventures. This blog will share some special moments of our current journey.

2 years ago our friend Bob was inspired to have 10 of us fly to the Seychelles for a weeklong diving trip. That’s how it all started…and then the plan continued to evolve beyond the original 7-10 days…to 35 days.

36 hours in Dubai

Starring: Rob, Brad, Mark and Luc!

Travel factoids:

    +      45 min flight from Vancouver to Seattle

    +      2 hour layover

    +      14.5 hour flight to Dubai (time zone is11 hours ahead)

   REALLY messed up sleep patterns

Two weeks before we got on the plane, the New York Times published a travelarticle and video called 36 hours in Dubai.

That’s about the amount of time we had. If you’ve ever had really bad jet lag then you know how thankful you are for a sleeping pill at ‘night’ when your body is pretty darn sure its daytime. Of course, you are equally thankful for highly stimulating environments during the daytime when your body thinks its nighttime! Dubai provided that stimulation with little effort.

At first glance the architecture and landscape feels like you’ve walked into the set of an early Star Wars movie. A sandstorm had come through the day before we landed; the driver said it was one of the worst (best?) storms in 50 years. Incredibly expensive cars sat with a light coating of sand (Dad, how do you clean those cars without scratching the paint…oh and water is kinda precious!). But other than that, the city was unbelievably clean with perfect gardens, water features and asphalt even!

I was surprised to learn that although oil helped fund the rapid development of the modern city, the oil resources are low and one of the main revenues is tourism. It’s an expensive place with an obvious extreme financial gap between societal classes.

We played perfect tourists and hit many of the highlights offered in the New York Times article

The Souk

Gold anyone??

Burj Khalifa – In 2010, it became the tallest man-made structure in the world, standing at 829.8 m (2,722 ft). Don’t worry CN Tower, you had 34 good years with that title!

The Mall

Indoor waterfall, ice rink, ski hill and aquarium….and a ridiculous amount of high-end shopping

If Dubai were a person:

I must say that you are a nicer place than I expected, it’s not you it’s me. I’m not as frightened as I was when I first thought of meeting you (It’s true I thought about cancelling our first date and wondered why I’d even spend time with you after reading some less-than-complementary factoids on your Wikipedia page!), we both know that I can’t really be ‘me’ when I’m around you.

You are exotic, vibrant and have this interesting futuristic quality that seems to be flashing forward while demanding respect for your traditions and history created from sand and sea. I once met a place that reminded me a bit of you – Vegas – a similar place that is fun for a day or two in a sensory overload kind of way. It’s odd to me that I think you two have a lot in common and yet are also so different. You two should go for a beer…right, sorry, coffee I guess.