As usual, whoever said getting there is half the fun never took a long-haul flight. We decided to go direct with Etihad rather than having a 4hr stopover in either Heathrow or Amsterdam, but that meant leaving at 8pm on saturday night and getting in around 7:20am on sunday morning. So, we lose one whole day of our 7 days, and we also miss the weekend in Dubai (their weekend is friday and saturday). We could have had a 5pm flight on the friday which would get us in early on saturday, but that would have meant taking another half day and Michele didn't have the hols to take that. The flight itself was an eye-opener after flying for so long with the likes of Ryanair and Aer Lingus: first we didn't have to pay for our bags and we had a 23Kg allowance, then when we got on the plane, we got free food and as many drinks as we wanted, the food was actually tasty (I've had far worse Lamb Koftas in restaurants over here) there was an in-flight entertainment system, and the hostesses were actually attentive and friendly! The only issue I'd have is that with all the stuff you got, the flight was almost too short at 7 1/2hrs: You took off, you got fed after a while, you watched one of the many movies on offer, then you only had about 3hrs to try to get some sleep before they woke you up for breakfast. I'd almost prefer a longer flight, as I only got about an hour's sleep! :-)
We arrived into Abu Dhabi airport anyway, roughly on time at around 7:20am and with only an hour's sleep under our belt.
When I got in, I discovered I had a problem: my phone didn't work, so I had no way to contact my cousin Enda to let him know we were in, so that he could meet us off the bus! I'd had an idea that this would happen, so I went off looking for a kiosk that I could be a pre-pay local SIM card in. Bit of a problem: the kiosk that used to sell them was closed down, and the shop that was open was only selling bill-pay SIMS that'd take a day to activate! Luckily, we figured out that it was the network I was roaming on - bit of advice if you're going to Dubai and roaming with Vodafone: don't let your phone automatically pick the network, manually select Du over Etisalat.
After that little kerfuffle was sorted out, we got on the complimentary Etihad coach for the 1 1/2hr trip to Dubai anyway at 10, and set of. Michelle promptly fell asleep on my shoulder, but once I'm awake and it's bright out that's it for me sleep-wise, so I just got to stare out the window at the passing scenery. Was my first time seeing "real" Desert, and my first reaction was "wow, tide's gone really far out hasn't it?" :-) Eventually in the distance I started seeing tall buildings, and then finally after about 45mins on the bus we got to Dubai. My first impression wasn't very favourable I'm afraid, there were lots of really nice really huge skyscrapers, any of which would be a landmark building in any other city (especially here, where our tallest building is a puny 16 stories) but they were just sort of plonked there on either side of Sheikh Zayeid road with nothing else around them - with some of them, if you looked at the gap between the buildings you could see the desert starting again about 100-200 yards back. So, it sort of almost had a movie set feel, or that it wasn't a city as such but more like someone decided to start a collection of really tall buildings with no real interest in giving them a proper setting.
Dubai from the road
Enda collected us off the bus anyway, and brought us in to our hotel. We'd definitely picked a good location: in the center of the "old city", directly across the road from the Dubai Museum and about 2 blocks from Dubai Creek. There was only one small problem: despite the fact that I'd specifically asked for an early check-in, our room wasn't ready, and wouldn't be ready until 2pm (and this was around 11am). So, Enda decided to take us on a quick whistle-stop tour of the area before he had to go back to work. So, we went on a very quick walk through the Bur Dubai souk, the Hindu Temple, down by the creek and ended up in a little restaurant in Bastakia, the former Persian quarter which now consisted of renovated buildings acting mostly as restaurants and art galleries. Here, I was introduced to what would become my drink of the holiday: fresh mint lemonade. We needed the drink and the sit-down, it was about 36 degrees and we were still dressed for irish weather! After Enda headed back to work (complete with his "care package" of rashers, sausages and black pudding), we pretty much just sat in the hotel lobby and tried to stay awake until our room was ready, which it finally was around 1:30pm.
Once we hit the room, we pretty much collapsed on the bed for a 2hr "power nap" before showering and heading out for a more leisurely stroll around the city (Enda had sort of forgotten that we were fresh off the plane and had been awake for nearly 20hrs straight and had set a rather brisk pace). This was one of the reasons I'd have preferred to arrive in the evening: our first day was pretty much a wash-out as we were too knackered and disoriented (and hot!) to so anything really. Around 7pm, we met up with Enda again, and his fiancee Joanna. They took us out on a tour of the souks, the textile and the tourist souk in Bur Dubai (the area we were staying in), then across the creek on board the little water ferries called abras. They were interesting: imagine a rickety little 15-foot boat with a bench down the middle and a bit of an awning and the "pilot" standing up in the middle. They pulled up to the dock, didn't bother tying up, you climbed on board, sat on the bench facing out the way, paid your 1 dirham (about 20c) and ye set off. There was a fair bit of competition for berths so occasionally you'd have a few abras bumping off each other or off the dock while they jockeyed for position, like a water taxi version of bumper cars - not for the faint-hearted but quite fun!
One of the abras on the creek
On the Deira side of the creek, Enda & Joanna took us up through the spice souk (which looked like one of the Harry Potter films should have been set there) and the Gold Souk (entire streets looking like a Mr.T costume party) before getting some food at a street vendor. I was actually a tad bit disappointed with the souks, I'd imagined they'd be a sort of cross between the stalls I was used to from the Silk Market in Beijing and the slave market scene from "Gladiator", but it was all nice and clean and proper, with proper shops on the side of the streets. After that, we sort of had to call it a night as we were knackered, so we headed back across the creek in the bumper-car abras and were unconscious pretty much as soon as our heads hit the pillows.
The Bur Dubai souk
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