Vol 81 Michele Day 13

For reasons which will become clear once you've seen it, Vol 81 is located at another site. It's a secret. In order to view it, you must either email me or leave a comment, requesting the address. Of course, I would prefer you to leave a comment. Perhaps you could use it as an opportunity to tell me (and the other readers) how much you love my blog and how great I am etc.

No, this is not a ploy, there really is a very good reason why I have hidden this next blog post. And it is a REALLY good post soooooooooo if you want to see it, let me know.

Vol 80 Michele Day 12

This is going to be the quickest blog post I write for Michele's trip to Oman.

Here we are in Sharjah, at 6am, waiting to board our plane back to Muscat.

We were dead-dog tired. It was actually difficult to get these photos. We were so tired we kept laughing while we were trying to capture the depth of our exhaustion.

When we got back to my apartment we slept and slept and slept.

We had dinner at Automatic Restaurant, an excellent Lebanese place. Clockwise from the plate on the left- Arugula, carrots, Syrian pickles and olives (comes with all meals in the same way bread does back home), Hummus, fatouche salad, and labneh with garlic. Labneh is like sour cream with a bit of cream cheese mixed in.You eat it and the hummus with Arabic bread which is prettu much the same as pita bread.

Michele had a mixed fresh juice cocktail- mango, strawberry and banana.

She also had grilled lamb kebabs which she tells me were very good.

That's it. That's pretty much all we did that day. Slept and ate dinner.

Vol 79 Michele Day 11

We landed around 6:30am in Sharjah. Poor Michele. We were sooooo tired. She had asked me when we got on the plane in Luxor if there were any more surprises, if we were sleeping in my bed that night. No, I told her, Yes, I told her. Of course, I was lying.



Honestly, she had done nothing but beg me to take her to Dubai from the moment she had bought her ticket to Oman. Even though I had just taken her to Egypt, which is infinitely more cool than Dubai, I felt like I was a bad sister if I didn't also take her to Dubai. After all, I had tricked her into going to Egypt by telling her we were going to Dubai. So when I bought the Luxor tickets I had them add a 24 hour layover in Sharjah, which is half an hour from Dubai.

Back in November I had CouchSurf hosted a guy named Marlon for 5 nights. He was visiting his sister, Bonita, in Dubai prior to visiting me and she came with him and stayed one night with me as well. They were from the Dutch Antilles Islands and they were really nice. Bonita had invited me to stay with her if I ever visited Dubai so I had contacted her before heading to Egypt and arranged for Michele and I to spend a night with her. Right after I filmed that video of Michele, I called Bonita and asked her for directions to her place so I could tell the cab driver where to go. She reply "You could do that, or you could just come outside. I'm waiting for you". Sweet!

This photo of Bonita and I was taken back in November. Bonita is vertically challenged and I have the opposite problem. Makes for a nice contrast, don't you think?

She took us back to her apartment, which is 3 minutes from the Mall of the Emirates, #20 on the world's largest shopping malls list. We slept for a couple of hours then Bonita took us to the Mall where we bought tickets to the Big Bus city tour. We figured hopping on the Big Bus tour would be the fastest way to get an overview of the city. The bus follows a couple or routes and your all day ticket allows you to get on and off where you please.

We had a quick peek at the mall, including Ski Dubai, an indoor ski resort with a 400 meter hill.



We hopped on the Big Bus and away we went. It's a double decker bus that's open air on the top. Very windy but the view was better from the top. Unfortunately the weather was not cooperating for our day in Dubai. It was cloudy/hazy. Still warm though.

Michele started snapping photos right away.

This is as good a time as any to make a confession. Sometimes I'm grumpy. Here's the thing- I don't like Dubai. It's too big and too traffic congested and too commercial and there is too much construction there. 1/3 of the world's cranes are in Dubai. I'm actually surprised Michele was able to get any photos of the city that did not have construction mess and 3 cranes in them. Anyway, back to the grumpy confession. Because I don't like Dubai, I only took 1 photo that day. And now I feel bad because Michele's photos are pretty crappy, especially her night shots (no offense, Michele). My nice camera stayed in the bag all day while Michele oohed and aahed over the city. I was trying to make the best of it, keep open minded or at the very least, enjoy my sister's company, but I just couldn't work up enough enthusiasm to take a bunch of photos. Sigh.



This is Wafi Mall. The Big Bus has a bunch of malls as potential stops and the Egyptian theme of Wafi Mall was cracking us up, so we got off.

Glass feature near the entrance.

Central pyramid-ceilinged area.



Thorton makes his final video.....



Michele's "Michele Witch Project" character did not find inspiration outside of Egypt.

Back on the Big Bus for more sightseeing.

If memory serves, one of the Sheiks lives behind those walls.


Bundled up on the windy bus.


Views of Dubai harbor.


A Mosque.


Iranian style Mosque.


We got off the Bus at the old souk. It was nice, but I like Mutrah Souk in Muscat better.

The entrance to the gold souk.

Inside the gold souk.

Typical gold jewelry. Most of it is made in India.

This photo is for my Mom- she loves big rings.

Another Mosque.

I had read there was a Spice Souk near the gold souk so we went off in search of it. Turns out it was 4 shops, all pretty much the same. Oh well, we had a nice walk looking for it.

Another of the 4 spice shops.

While looking for the Spice Souk we passed through what Michele dubbed the Plastic Souk. It was basically a bunch of Arabic style dollar stores all clumped together.

Back on the Bus we continued along the harbor.



There was quite a bit of activity on the docks, loading and unloading boxes and crates onto and off of traditional Dhows. Pretty cool to see that they are still using the old boats.

We headed back to Bonita's, had a shower and then went to the Dubai Jazz Festival.

Bonita is an English teacher and one of her colleagues joined us for the evening.

We went to the Radisson SAS Hotel. There was a swedish singer and her band on the patio on the 8th floor. Tickets included a mediocre dinner.



This is the part where I feel guilty about not taking any photos....

Still guilty. After listening to the music for a while Bonita decided we needed to drive around a bit, try to show Michele some of the sights. This crappy photo is the ceiling of a really cool shopping area.

This crappy photo is of an outdoor restaurant in the cool shopping area.

It was late at night but some of the shops were still open.


Bonita's friend, Sherri.

Detail of a beautifully embroidered shawl.

The shops were all very nice but VERY expensive. Dubai is known for it's shopping. If you have money.

Detail of a trunk lid.

Bonita is trying to give us rabbit ears but she's so short we had to hunker down and she still couldn't reach my head! Still feeling guilty about the camera thing...

Yup, guilty, guilty, guilty..... This is the famous Burj Hotel.
So guilty that I downloaded this photo of the Burj from the internet so you can see that it is shaped like a sail boat. 7 star hotel.

I have no idea what this blurry mess is.

We went back to Bonita's apartment where we slept very soundly for a few hours, then we piled our tired asses into a cab and headed to the airport in Sharjah.