Burj Al Arab & 360 Degrees

Me & Jared at the Skyview.

On Tuesday night, after our afternoon of skiing, we decided to end the day in swankier fashion by having drinks at the Burj Al Arab's Skyview Bar. If you look at this Burj from the side (see below), the Skyview is the little ledge that sticks out the back, facing the sea, opposite the helipad (which, by the way, we watched helicopters landing on and taking off from all day the day we were at Wild Wadi, a cool experience that Jared and I have never had before).

The Skyview isn't really a 'local' place that you'd hang out at if you lived here (we have only been there once before when Jared lived here in '07-'08), but more of a novelty place you would take visitors. And as such, it is insanely overpriced and has a minimum spending limit of approximately $75 USD a person. Kind of outrageous, but our guests wanted to go, and it is a worthwhile experience, because having a booking at one of the restaurants or bars in the Burj Al Arab is the only way you can get onto its private island and inside to take a look.

When you arrive you have to check in at the Gate House and give your reservation confirmation number. Once they've confirmed that you have a legitimate purpose for being there, you are then taken out to the private island via golf cart. You feel quite special and pampered by the whole experience. Then, once you get inside the lobby you feel like you've been magically transported into a Genie's Bottle (circa, I Dream of Jeanie) and are met with over the top opulence of fountains and gold-plated everything. I was coming from a work event so met the group there since they arrived earlier to take photos of the lobby. You take an open glass elevator (facing the sea) to the 23rd floor and step into the bar that feels like a 70's retro bowling alley (as Jess described it) or to me, the inside of the Star Trek Enterprise (I'm not a trekkie, but somehow the name just popped into my head). They serve you some nuts and olives and a tiny plate of canapes and each drink is so expensive that 2-3 drinks can quickly get you to your $75 a person minimum. The drinks are delicious though and I particularly liked the names of Brett's ("Prohibited & Risky") and Scott's ("G's Desire").

Group Photo sans Jared in front of the Burj.

Fountain out front

View of the Burj from the 360 Degree Bar.

Once we had met our drink quota, we decided to head somewhere a little more reasonable to continue our night with some more drinks we could actually afford. We asked one of the golf carts to drive us out to the 360 Degree Bar on a pier about 100 yards out into the Gulf with fantastic views of both the Burj and Jumeirah Beach Hotel. It's an outdoor rooftop bar (there's an expensive seafood restaurant called "Pier Chic" downstairs") and it was the perfect night for outdoor drinks. We stayed for a couple hours and had a really lovely night.

View of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel (JBH) from 360.

Desert Monkeys

On Wednesday, we did some pooling in the morning (the tan competition was on) and then headed to a store called the "Antique Museum" for some souvenir shopping. We discovered the Antique Museum in November '07 and it is basically a giant warehouse in the middle of no where divided into different rooms with goods and handicrafts from around the world (with a section or room for each region/country). It's kind of trippy/freaky the first time you go because you are basically in this sketchy warehouse in the middle of no where. It's fantastic though if you're looking for kitschy or unique gifts because they literally have EVERYTHING and at wholesale prices because they are the distributor for all the gift shops around town. Brett, Scott, and Jess did some shopping and I just enjoyed wandering around because you always see new things every time you go (and then end up buying something even if you have no intention when you go in). We explored that for about an hour and then headed home to get ready for our Desert Safari (the obligatory albeit fun tourist activity).

Our driver picked us up at around 4pm and then you drive out to the desert to meet up with the caravan of other Land Cruisers. This time was a little unique though because he stopped at a kind of desert recreation park on the way to meeting up. The park had go-carts and 4-wheelers you could rent out to go dune bashing on your own, and also had animals. MONKEYS.

Yeah, the park literally just had monkeys wandering around unleashed. I thought it was all cute when we first walked in so I started approaching this monkey to take his picture. He promptly ran up to me and clung onto my leg. I screamed and he fled (as above). Only in Dubai!

After my monkey friend fled, he then climbed into the donkey pen and decided to go for a ride.

And then when he'd had enough climbed out.

This little monkey was the less fortunate one who was tied up.

But don't worry, his loose little friend came over and picked the bugs off for him.

We had about 15-20 minutes to hang out at the park and I was pretty transfixed by the monkeys the whole time so didn't really do much else before we headed back to the car for our safari.

[Another] Desert Safari

Boys in the desert

My attempt at an 'artsy' desert shot. You can only take so many pictures of the desert before you have to change it up.

Random camels wandering in the desert. Yeah, this is Dubai, but they are owned by someone and notice how their legs are bound to prevent them from getting too far.

CAMEL FARM!

Camel pursuing Scott. We requested the same driver we had had with Jared's Dad (Abbas). We liked him because not only is he a fun driver through the dunes, but he throws in little extras like stopping at the camel farm.

Deira Fish Souq

We tried to leave Thursday and Friday open as kind of "guest's choice" days so that Brett, Scott, and Jess would have an opportunity to do anything they specifically wanted to do or see, or else go back somewhere they really liked. They all love golf (Jess's boyfriend Matt is a golf pro actually) and so one thing they wanted to see were some of the famous golf courses here. I had to work Thursday morning, so they headed out to the Emirates Golf Course and then pooled it for the afternoon.

In the late afternoon, we thought it might be neat to check out the Deira Fish Souq, something Jared and I have never done before but has been highly recommended by friends for getting the freshest fish in town. It is probably the coolest fish market I've ever been too (HUGE just caught fish by the ton in wheel barrels) but our guests were a little sketched out by the smell (not good. the fishiest fishy smell ever as soon as we got out of our car) and we all got a little turned off by the guy who walked us through a back room over a floor inch deep in fish guts. Suffice to say, we decided not to buy anything that day, but Jared and I will undoubtedly go back and try grilling some fish from there in the near future.

Literally, fish by the wheel barrel, and we were also chased by a guy with an empty wheel barrel, trying to convince us that we needed one for the 50 pounds of fish he assumed we must be buying..

Giant Tuna, King Fish and the local favorite Hammour.

Giant crustaceans.

Showing off the wares.

I really enjoyed the Fish Souq, but once we decided not to buy anything, we headed home and made a plan to have dinner at the Kaleidoscope Restaurant buffet at the Atlantis Hotel on the Palm Jumeirah. Our visitors wanted an opportunity to see inside the Atlantis and we had coupons for the buffet so went for it. Coincidentally, Vanilla Ice was in town for a concert (who knew he even toured?) and Jared and Scott saw him in the lobby. After dinner with bellies full we headed to another favorite bar of ours, Buddha Bar, with the 30 foot gold buddha for a drink before calling it a night.

White & Gold Party

Friday the 2nd was sadly our last day with our guests. We figured it would be nice to get one last good beach day in so headed to the Marina and JBR Walk beach first thing. Brett, Scott, and Jess didn't want to leave because they wanted to soak up as much sun as possible, so around noon Jared and I left them on the beach to grab some lunch and then after we ate we picked them up and all headed home to shower. Our friend Elizabeth who lives in an amazing apartment right on the beach in Jumeirah happened to be having one of her famous color-themed parties that night, so we figured it would be a fun thing to do for the last night. The party was "White & Gold" themed and so (obviously) it was a prerequisite to wear white and/or gold or both. I was excited because for Elizabeth's last themed party in the fall (The Yellow Party), I was insanely hungover and couldn't enjoy myself at all. After we all got cleaned up from the beach we headed to the Dubai Mall to pick up our 'costumes'. H&M has quickly become my goto clothing store here (mostly because I can't really afford to shop anywhere else at the mall as 90% are couture designer stores), so we promptly headed to H&M where I found a white dress and then got carried away with the gold accessories. We grilled at home for our last dinner and after all the suitcases were packed and ready to go, we headed to the party.

The White & Gold Twins. Scott literally didn't take off the sunglasses alllll night. I have no idea how he could see anything on the dark strobe lit roof. I guess alcohol helps.

Me & Jared

Me & Elizabeth (the hostess)

Me with Brett and Scott. Please notice how bright red they both were... I think Brett might have won the tan competition... Scott definitely won the burn one. His chest and back were pink pink pink. It can't have been a comfortable plane ride home.

Scott and his wing-man (our good friend) Ruch

The last group photo.... Brett doesn't in fact have Jess in a head lock, but he's trying to cover up her crazy sunburn. This is Jess's 'after' picture.

On Saturday morning at 5:45 we dropped them off at the airport. What an amazing week we had and we were very sad to see them go.... Hopefully they all had as much fun as we did hosting. Until next year....

A Dubai Easter

Happy Dubai Easter! So we've celebrated yet another holiday in Dubai. It was the day after our whirlwind of visitors left, so we wanted a quiet night, although we both worked during the day. Since we couldn't find a ham (my family's tradition, which Mrs. K usually obliges for me, just one of the reasons I love her), we decided to go non-traditional with Julia Child's stuffed leg of lamb. I'm not really a big lamb person (although kebabs are delicious), but we figured after ham, lamb is a pretty traditional Easter meal. I picked Jared up at the mall after work so he could pick up last minute dinner ingredients and he surprised me with a beautiful HUGE bouquet of lilies (my favorite flower -- tied with peonies). So pretty and made our apartment smell amazing for the whole week.

My Easter table decor. Like I've said, I LOVE holidays, so I'm doing what I can to improvise while I'm here without any of my stuff...

Jared is always such a sport and engages in my holiday traditions... like dying eggs. He actually gets really into some of them, and was attempting to do multi-colored eggs with designs.

Our Dubai Easter Basket. Can you tell I love Reeses Peanut Butter Eggs?

So once we got home, Jared went to work de-boning our leg of lamb using directions he found online. His culinary abilities never cease to amaze me. He was able to successfully de-bone our little friend in about 10 minutes (faster than I made the stuffing for it) and then after a little stress involving how we would tie our roast (there is no cooking twine to be found in Dubai) we were able to skewer it together using bamboo kebab skewers. With the help of our meat thermometer, Jared cooked the lamb perfectly with a side of garlic mashed potatoes and asparagus. We finished with some chocolate bunny and had a lovely Easter despite being 6000+ miles away from family. Although we enjoyed ourselves, hopefully we don't have to do too many more Dubai holidays.

Alone Again and Julia Child

This morning our visitors left. :( We had a fabulous 10 days hosting Brett, Scott, and Jess, but they sadly flew out this morning. I thought I would be excited to get back to normal, but after I woke up for the second time (the first was at 5:45am to drop them off at the airport, which we clearly went back to bed after), I actually felt really sad and missed them already! We literally did EVERYTHING and it was just so much fun again to 'take the time to smell the flowers' of what Dubai has to offer that we don't usually do while going about normal life here. I will post tons of pictures of all the fun we had in the next couple days..

After we woke up for real we headed to our friends Melissa and Dom's for an Easter Brunch. Chocolate bunnies, omelets, and bacon. What could be better! 4 hours later and multiple card games of bullshit (which apparently the Brit's and Aussie's call 'Cheat,' less offensive I guess, but less fun to shout out) we headed out to refill our empty pantry and refrigerator in to attempt to get back to normal life, following lots of eating out with our visitors.

I was actually really excited to start cooking again, because I just got Julia Child's Cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Jess, being the wonderful friend that she is, let me weigh down her suitcase on the way here with lots of toiletry requests from Target and also an Amazon.com order which included Julia's cookbook. I've been reading her autobiography on my Kindle (my favorite little gadget at the moment) and so after reading about all the delicious food she ate living in France, Jared and I have been dying to try making some ourselves. So we brought the book to the market and decided to make her "Chicken Fricasse" as our first foray into authentic French cooking. It turns out French cooking takes a lonnng time and TONS of pots and pans (3 hours and more than a dishwasher full of dishes). We improvised a little bit because we didn't read the recipe carefully enough at the market (French cooking is also complicated), but in the end it turned out really well. We couldn't find an Easter ham for tomorrow despite a valiant search, so we'll be continuing our French experimentation tomorrow with stuffed leg of lamb for Easter dinner. We'll see how that turns out. For now, to bed to go back to our normal work routines tomorrow, after our truly lovely week with visitors!

Our first French meal. Chicken Fricasse. Yum.