Fall in Dubai

Fall has arrived in Dubai! I can tell because I can finally walk around outside and not begin to immediately sweat profusely and actually engage in outdoor activities (and enjoy them!).

This weekend was probably our first 'fall' weekend here, and I loved it! Jared was gone to Madrid for an International Law Conference all last week and so I was on my own until Friday morning when his flight landed at 6am. I didn't want to sit home on my own on the equivalency of a Friday night, so on Thursday night when I was invited by my group of new girl friends to attend a comedy club called "The Laughter Factory" I didn't hesitate. It is actually a touring comedy company and is held at different venues once a month. This month it was held at a small hotel in Bur Dubai, pretty far from where we are living now in Downtown Burj Dubai, but very close to where Jared used to live in Dubai when he was here from '07-'08 and also near the hotel we lived in for our first two weeks here. The show was very funny (and quite sexually explicit for a Middle Eastern Muslim country... little to no Emerati's were present, however), and afterward my friend Clare, her friend Ronak, and I decided to walk to find a Burger King that was supposed to be very close for some food. Well, we ended up walking for about 35 minutes and never got to a Burger King, but as I was walking it suddenly struck me at how comfortable I felt. It was about 11:30pm, but there was no humidity in the air and I was even wearing a light 3/4 sleeve sweater and was still perfectly happy walking down the street. It was fall! We never did end up finding that Burger King and so in desperation finally caught a taxi who took us to a very far Burger King where we enjoyed every bite as a result of the anticipation (I don't even like Burger King under ordinary circumstances, McDonald's is my fast food of choice).

Then Jared arrived home on early Friday morning and I whiled away the morning while he slept very late to overcome the effects of jet lag and his red eye flight. When he finally got moving we decided to take a walk to the Souq Al Bahar (about a 10-12 minute walk) to get some coffee (or chai in my case) and pastries. Again, I could not help but notice how delightfully comfortable I was to be outside walking during daylight hours. Very little sweating and I was even clean and wearing normal clothes and not running clothes like I used to have to wear to walk around outside. Absolutely delightful! After our breakfast (or late late Brunch given the time) we decided to take a taxi to Ikea to pick up a few more touches to make the apartment more cozy (and also things like measuring cups that we were beginning to desperately need if we wanted to properly cook). Ikea was a success (in and out of Ikea in probably an hour and a half with 95% of everything we were looking for can definitely be said to be a success) and then we headed to the Crown Plaza Hotel at Festival City (next door) to have a light dinner at the Belgian Beer Company (BBC) restaurant we've been wanting to try. On our walk over though we saw a beautiful sunset (see photo above) and noticed that we weren't the only ones taking advantage of the cooler fall weather to get outside and enjoy. Unfortunately, the BBC was underwhelming (no Framboise for me so I had to settle with a Peach Lambic, and the frites were pretty weak... McDonald's has more authentic Belgian frites than this place, but I guess when our basis of comparison is our favorite European-style pub "The Publick House" in Boston, then perhaps we're a tough sell). Still lovely and after dinner we headed to our friends Diana and Mahmoud's apartment in Jumeirah Lakes Towers (fake lake to be filled in any day now they tell us... even though they've been living there for a year with a dust-bowl instead of a lake below their balcony) for a movie and some drinks. Really a 'nice little' Friday.

Our Clean Garden

Saturday we motivated much earlier because we wanted to go to Carrefour (giant Target / Super Walmart type store) to do our grocery shopping for the week and also buy a few other odds and ends for the apartment. We got that out of the way early (it becomes a Mumbai mob scene the later in the day you go) and then came home to do some gardening. Now that the weather is cooling off we are really going to start enjoying the fact that we have a garden! While Jared was in Madrid I bought more mulch (because we had already mulched most of it but had run out) and so Jared mulched while I weeded and scrubbed and hosed all the furniture down because things get very dusty out there since we overlook a construction site. By the time we were done our garden looked amazing and we rewarded ourselves with a swim in the pool. Then, after we got back we started some homemade pumpkin soup (you can apparently get pumpkins here, but they look more like speckled gourds.. on the inside they're normal though. weird) and had a little cocktail hour in the garden. Jared brought back some delicious Rioja from Madrid and also some cured ham... amazing. We decided we'd let the soup just simmer all night and stick with our ham, cheese, crackers, and caviar (Jared's treat for helping in the garden) for dinner. A very very nice, productive and relaxing, Saturday.

Our View of the Burj Dubai from our Garden... I felt quite pampered drinking my Rioja while looking at this view.
Random picture, but this is our 'horse' Ferrari who sits outside the front door of our apartment and keeps guard. He's in a nook only visible from our apartment and the one next door, so we like to think of him as our personal wooden horse. I forgot to post him with the other apartment pics.

Last night (Sunday) felt even more fall-like for me as we enjoyed our homemade pumpkin soup with baguette and it was possibly better than when we made it in Boston last fall using my crock pot... Maybe there is something to be said for Middle-Eastern pumpkins. We ate it while watching Sunday (afternoon -- night for us) Football and then the Redsox game inexplicably came on and I was over the moon... I thought, comfy pj's, homemade pumpkin soup, and October baseball (and our team!)... This is Fall! Maybe Dubai isn't so bad....