Back from Dubai

I could probably wax on endlessly about thoughts on political or cultural Dubai, and that was only after a short one week visit. However, my purpose in going was work and then a few days on the beach. A few general thoughts:

Jumeirah beach was lovely:

However, October only begins the cooler season. Here in late Sept it was 30 C/90 F as soon as the sun rose before 7 AM and only continued upward until the sunset at 6.30 PM.

So I limited my beach time to early AM and after 3 PM. There was a pleasant breeze and the sand was soft. While you see cars in the photo and maybe 50 or so were on the beach, it didn't really seem crowded with people. In addition, there was a paved car lot next to the beach. There is a drop on the beach, so cars could only come so close, and in addition, the sand was deeper as one got closer to the water, so cars had to stay a short distance away.

The food was very international. Every chain imaginable can be found in Dubai. I saw McDonalds, Subway, TGIFridays, Pizza Express (UK), Ruby Tuesdays, and some other repeated restaurants like 'Wok Away'.

After a work week of being on the business travel and having our hosts take us to wonderful restaurants, I had to detox and eat out of the supermarket once the weekend came and I was on my own. I had asked at the hotel for the closest supermarket and was pleasantly surprised by their fresh food offerings. Everything here was packaged that morning and expired the next day and included no preservatives or chemical ingredients:

This ended up being lunch and dinner on Saturday as I had a minibar fridge in the room. From the back left: a salad with tuna, moutabal, humous, and then in the middle row were artichokes and a fava bean salad, and in front, fresh bread.

Everything together ran me about 8 GBP. Not bad for two healthy meals while on holiday.

On the frugal side, I was lucky on this trip. The flights were covered by work due to the business travel. In addition, Emirates Air was running a special deal on UK Business class tickets from the UK and issued in the UK during the 'summer season' which still includes September--two nights of a hotel on their special list was free. Utterly and completely free. So after I checked out of the work meetings, I checked into my free hotel for two nights of beach and relaxing.

From the special Emirates hotel list, I chose the Sofitel Jumeirah Beach, a five star hotel that is located outside of the city center, on the beach. Or more appropriately, across the parking lot to a public beach. In addition, the pool was down for maintenance, although there was still a deck lounge area near the pool. I had reviewed in advance online, a lot of people gave the hotel a hard time for not having a private beach, and for being across the parking lot from the beach. Considering I paid nothing to stay two nights, I have no right to complain, but I found the hotel to be lovely, parking lot and all. In addition, the hotel had free wireless throughout, which is always a big plus in my book. The biggest negative? I had only a 'side-beach view', which I knew before arriving from the literature. So I could see the beach and water while sitting on the balcony or directly in front of the doors to it, but not from the rest of the room. So I sat on the shaded balcony during those hot mid-day hours with my cool drinks from inside and my books.

I did find it interesting to be near the locals on the beach, or Middle Eastern tourists perhaps. No one gave me any hassles and someone noticed my collecting of seashells at the water and came back from snorkeling and dropped off a few for me, without a word. There were a fair number of tourists on the beach as well, they were easy to pick out by their sunburns.

While I saw their big, airconditioned mega malls, I didn't really see anything that I needed to buy. I did bring back the seashells and some sand in my shoes, however. ;-) I also tucked away the posh little extra shampoos and the like, for my occasional visitors.

While I probably wouldn't have gone on my own for holidays (primarily due to the distance of 7 hours to London), I'm glad I did get to go. As well, my liver probably appreciated the alcohol free adventure. While certain restaurants are able to sell alcohol and even the hotel had 'happy hour' where there were able to sell alcohol from 6-8 PM each night, I wasn't taking any chances in that society based on some of the stories I was hearing during the week about the government intervention into local life. In addition, I noticed that alcohol was expensive, higher than Iceland prices even which was previously the highest I've seen it, and that would have blown the frugal budget at 6 GBP for a beer. :-)