An American in Dubai: Visitors!

The first morning, beaching, sunning, and swimming at JBR Walk Beach.

Last week we had our very first visitors! We were so excited when Jared's Dad Harry and Linda emailed us on February 18th to tell us that they had booked flights to come a week later on February 25th for 6 days until March 3rd. We didn't have much time to plan since I was in the midst of my visa bureaucracy craziness, but we were still so excited because we truly didn't think they would be able to make the trip.

They arrived about 8:30pm on Thursday night, having taken the Emirates direct flight from JFK. We weren't sure how they would feel after such a long flight, so didn't plan anything for that night, and just had some dates and figs and cheese and crackers and wine and caught up at our place. We were up chatting until about midnight and then wanted to let them sleep as late as they needed the next morning to avoid jet lag (we are 9 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time here!).

They actually woke up pretty early and we found them relaxing in our garden at about 7:30am. We got ready pretty quickly and headed out to show them a bit of Dubai first thing, by heading to the Marina and JBR beach for Starbuck's and swimming. It was great to get up and just relax. We usually have things we need to accomplish on weekends and rarely take the time to just get coffee and sit on the beach on Friday mornings.

We vegged at the beach for a couple hours and enjoyed watching the camel walking back and forth. Apparently, the little girl riding this camel, rides the camel every morning, despite the fact that she appears to be about 2-3 and like she could fall off at any moment. Oh Dubai!

Jared, Harry, Me at The Atlantis Hotel on the Palm Jumeirah.

After a couple hours, we decided to get out of the sun and head home and get ready to go to lunch. But before we went home, we decided to give them a driving tour of the Palm Jumeirah man-made palm-shaped islands. I find the whole Palms/man-made island projects to be highly unnatural and disturbing since it results in homes and hotels being created in what should be about a mile out to sea. Certainly not good for the sea life and tidal movement (not to mention what the dredging did to the reefs)...