Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Dubai














































Were do I begin...for starters Holy Cow, I was in freaking Dubai! I, never in a million years, would have ever thought I would have the opportunity to visit a middle eastern city. We all hear about Dubai, we all see pictures of the hotels, the beaches, the city, yet how many people do you know that can say "Yes, I have been to Dubai!" Well, It was all Viv's idea. I wanted to go to Italy and see all that Italy had to offer, Viv had other plans. He wanted to visit somewhere that if we were living in the US, would be harder to visit, like Dubai. It's a 8 hour plane ride from London, and you fly over city's you only hear about on CNN. We flew directly over Kuwait and Baghdad, and a few hours later we landed in Dubai. For starters, the bathroom was different. I walked into a bathroom stall in the airport to see a hole in the ground..I stopped, looked at it, and then looked at it some more...I said to myself, um what do I do?! I then left the stall, and went into another stall, where I saw my friend, a western toilet. Phew! After we located out luggage we walked outside to be knocked back by the heat and humidity at 9 at night. At 9pm, the humidity was unbearable. Just waiting for a cab, I looked like I had been at the gym, with water beading on my forehead from just standing. The hotel was about 20 minutes from the airport. We stayed at the Sheridan located on Jumeirah Beach. Our hotel room had the largest balcony that overlooked the resort, the ocean, and the high rises. The following morning we woke up to hotness! The temperature at 9am was 110 degrees, and with the humidity it felt like you were in the Devil's layer. We decided to visit the pool, seeing that it was the only thing you could do outside.
I don't know why the hotel even has lawn chairs because you can't use them, its too bloody hot! Viv and I were in the pool then entire time we were at the pool. They had a great bar that you could swim up to and sit in the water while enjoying a pretty cocktail with an umbrella in it. All the people at the resort were European. How could I tell you ask?....well, the size of their tinny speedo's gave it away. I think that there might have been 2-3 other men wearing board shorts at the pool, they were obviously British, while all the other men wore ittsy-bitsy-tinny-weeny speedo's...and no ladies, no one at the pool looked like David Beckham in a speedo, if you catch my hairy, fat, ugly drift. After our fingers looked like prunes, Viv and I decided to check out the local mall, seeing that everyone told us Dubai has the best malls in the world, aka, Heaven! What makes things even better is that there is no personal or income taxes in Dubai, so what you see on the price tag, is what you pay! The currency in Dubai is the Dirham, although many places you go the price tag is in Durham and also USD, although you can't pay in the USD. We hopped into a cab and found our way to the Dubai Mall, aka, the largest mall in the world! Did I mention that Dubai was my Heaven? The Dubai Mall cost 20 billion dollars to build and has over 1,200 shops and over 12 million square feet. Its bran-spanking new and still hasn't had its grand opening yet. There were a lot of stores that still had not opened. But, boy do they like western food; Uno Chicago Pizzeria, Taco Bell (where we had lunch, it was the best lunch ever!) Hardee's, Caribou Coffee, Burger King, Starbucks Coffee (no surprise, a grande soy latte cost 9$USD!) KFC, Panda Express, Subway, Johnny Rocket's, Dunkin Donuts, just to name a few that we saw. Also lots of western shops, Bloomingdales, Express, Gap, BCBG, Forever 21, Clair's, Guess, Coach, Crocs, and many more. I wasn't expecting to see so many western stores, most of these stores and restaurants can't be found in London, so It was surprising to see them somewhere so far away. But this mall doesn't just offer shopping and eating, of course not, not in Dubai!...there is a 22 cinema screen theater, a fashion catwalk atrium where the floor rises up and becomes a catwalk, there is a section of the mall called Fashion Island, and its my Mecca! There are 70 stores dedicated to haute couture. (Heaven I tell you!) There is a replica of London's Regent street, a Aquarium that's in the Guinness book of world records for having the worlds largest viewing panel, an Olympic sized ice rink, the largest gold souk, a retractable roof in part of the mall, a supermarket and an organic foods market too. And did I mention the 150-room luxury hotel that you can stay in when you can't find your car in the 14,000 parking spots? Needless to say, by the time we left this mall, our feet, our backs and wallets were hurting! Oh, I almost forgot to tell you...well, I didn't know that it's against Muslim religion for women to show their shoulders in public, and so when we got to the mall, Viv had to run into Gap and get me a scarf to cover my shoulders because I was wearing a strapless dress...always do your research before going to another country! After lots and lots of walking, we headed back to the hotel had a bite to eat and called it a night.

The following day was nice. Nice meaning that it was only 100 degrees and the humidity was at 70 percent, so the pool we headed to. Today you could actually sit in your lawn chair for 20 minutes before your head started beading up with water. The pool was great, but I was more interested in the ocean. Dubai sits in the Arabian Gulf, and the gulf felt like a hot tube. I'm not a big ocean, sea creature kind of girl, so I was delighted to see the bottom of the ocean was clean with white sand and not a fish in sight. I think the water was just too hot for fish and such, but it wasn't too hot for me! I swam around like a fish and would run to the pool to get cooled off from the hot waters of the gulf. I did some shelling and found some great shells along the beach. The entire day was spent back and forth between the pool and the ocean, with a quick break for lunch at the hotels buffet...not a bad day!

After a day of sun and sand, Viv and I needed to spend our last day seeing Dubai. What a better way then a double-decker bus tour! The tour lasted 6 hours! And we saw it all, Palm Island, Burj Al Arab, The Gold Souk, the Dubai Marina, and Burj Dubai.
I really enjoyed Palm Island and being able to be on the island. For those of you who don't know, Palm Island is the world first man made, artificial islands located in the Arabian Gulf. They look like a giant Palm from the sky and can be seen in space. Its said to be the 8th wonder of the world. There are all kinds of residential and commercial properties on the island. Trump has a building being built and the Atlantis hotel is located at the crescent of the Palm. The Palm has its own monorail public transportation system. When your driving on the island, you can't really tell that your on this palm shaped structure, but who cares, its a really cool concept. With the success of the Palm, the developers announced a larger Palm to be started in 2004 and to take 10-15 years to build, but that was before the global credit crunch that has all but killed the real estate capital of the world, Dubai. I know that real estate on the Palm can't be cheep, because in every driveway that I saw there was a luxury car in the driveway, and when I saw luxury, I don't mean a Mercedes C-class, I mean a Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini...and who is surprised, after all, Dubai has the highest per capita incomes in the world.
We also visited the Gold Souk, about 30 minutes from our hotel. Its a traditional market in Dubai located in the heart of eastern Dubai's commercial business. 1 in 5 people in Dubai purchase 5 pieces of gold a year, and this is where they do it! By some estimates, approximately 10 tons of gold is present at any given time in the Souk. And gold isn't just what they offer, they have diamonds and exotic stones galore. Just walking around the Souk, you are mesmerized my the windows staring in your direction. Merchants walk the street trying to get you to visit their store, with bribes of water and juice to get you out of the hot weather. I have never seen such amazing jewelry in my life (with the exception of any Cartier store) And just about every store had a customer doing some browsing. Nothing has the price on it, the merchants come up with the price by weighing the piece and looking at the days gold price, then you can barter with the guy, hoping to come home with a prize piece for a cheep price. In one window, we saw a diamond ring that was 15 million dollars, and it had to be the size of an strawberry! You needed two fingers to keep that ring on. It was terribly hot (imagine that) so we walked around the market for about a half hour until we had to get back on our air conditioned double-decker bus.
We had a chance to see the Burj Dubai in all its glory. The Burj Dubai is the world tallest building at 2,684 feet high with 160 floors and the worlds fastest elevator. Its architects are familiar names; Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, who are the Chicago based architects and engineers responsible for that other tall building, Sears Tower (I can't call it Willis yet) The building cost 4.1 billion to construct, and if your thinking that maybe a corner office in this building could be nice, well get your check books out, because it will cost you $4,000 per square foot to occupy this famous space. It took them 5 years to build it, and it will also offer a hotel and will be the first world's tallest structure in history that includes a residential space.
The hotel and residence have a famous name attached to it: Giorgio Armani! That's right, Mr. Armani is opening his very first hotel in the Burj Dubai and he will also offer residences as well, for a measly beginners asking price of $3,500 per square foot. I wonder if they will throw in a nice Armani suit for that price?! The buildings grand opening is slated for mid-September and they better hurry, seeing that Skidmore, Owings and Merrill will be completing the new "worlds tallest" back in Chicago in a few years.
Last but not least, the Burj Al Arab. It's the only hotel in the world that has a 7-star ranking. And is the second tallest building in the world used exclusivity as a hotel. It's located on its own man-made island that has a giant, intimidating gate that you have to access to get to the hotel. Well, we didn't access the gate. The only way to see the hotel in all its glory is to either 1. pay $1,500 a night to stay there or 2. have a dinner reservation, which you can imagine isn't cheep. We looked into having dinner but decided that $300.00 a plate without drinks wasn't a top priority (I'm more of a taco bell kind of girl anyways) As you drive around Dubai, you can see the top of the building from the streets, and I was always trying to catch a good picture of it. The building is build to resemble sails of a dhow, a type of Arabian vessel. It seems to be a very iconic symbol for Dubai, much like the opera house is to Sydney or the Eiffel tower is to Paris. The hotel coat $650 million to build, but by charging $1,500 a night and $300 a plate for dinner, I think they got their money back real fast! The largest suit in the hotel is 8,400 square feet and cost $28,000 a night!!! Ok, so I'm going to have to wait to win the lottery, actually with that price, a few lotteries! A long day of sightseeing Dubai was behind us now and it was time to eat.
Viv and I decided to go back to Chicago for dinner...actually, we decided to go to Uno Chicago Pizzeria for a dinner of deep dish. Was it good, yes. Was it just like at home, no. The pizza was a little different, the pepperoni was not spicy , and the sausage was crumbled all over the pizza and didn't taste all that great, but I'm not complaining. There were pictures of Chicago all over the restaurant and there were baseball games in the TV's...we felt like we were back home, that is until we looked around and saw all the other customers in the restaurant, and looked at the water bottle that was written in Arabic. It was nice, and with our belly's full we were ready to catch our 3am flight to Maldives for the next leg of our holiday...

Pictures left to right:
1.Palm Island from the sky- no I didnt take this pic
2. Burj Al Arab, the 7-star, uber expensive hotel
3. A few buildings in the city, business district
4. Worlds tallest buiding, Burj Dubai
5. Me wanting everything in the Gold Souk
6. A view of our hotel pool with Viv floating arond.
7. My favorite lunch, Taco Bell!
8. Viv and myself at the beach
9. The view of the resort and gulf from our rooms balcony.

Monday, August 3, 2009

Roxanne...
































"Roxanne, you don't have to put on the red light." Well we all know who sang those famous words, and now after a weekend trip to Amsterdam, I understand who Sting was singing about.
Viv had to go to Amsterdam for work, so we made a weekend of it and packed up our bags. Just a 45 minute flight from London, and a cab ride into the heart of the city. Our hotel was amazing! It was almost as large as our flat in London. It had two bedrooms, one of which was a loft over looking the living room. The living room had a small kitchen and a 50" flatscreeen TV. But the best part of the room was the view. We were on the 6th floor, and when you pulled back the curtains, you could open a large double window and look over the canal and the street. (and there was no screen, so it made me a little nervous, I could have easily fallen out the window) The view was lovely and and city was beautiful with the buildings and bridges all light up in the night. The next morning, V iv went off to his business meetings and I met my cousin...

How weird, my cousin was in Amsterdam. She lives in Atlanta and was visiting Paris and decided to hop on over to Amsterdam the same weekend Viv and I were visiting. I met her and her French friend at a cafe were we sat and caught up on the family drama. After lunch we met Viv back at the hotel and the four of us took a stroll over to the Heineken Experience. This was the perfect way to start our Amsterdam trip. Heineken IS the beer, or as they spell it, bier, of Amsterdam. Heineken stopped brewing her in 1988, but keeps the building open for flashy tours. The Heineken Experience was nothing more then their marketing department bombarding us with the Heineken trademark, the slogan and of course, the smiling E's...but there was a light at the end of the tour...free beer! You see, Dutch social life is all about drinking. The cafe's, as they call them, offer oodles and oodles of beer choices, always having Heinekin on the menu. After getting our buzz on, I had the courage to ask my cousin about the Red Light District. Viv and I didn't really know what the deal was about this area, I mean of course, I knew they did, well, illegal things, but didn't know if it was, well, a tourist stop? Sure enough, she had been there the evening before and gave me a heads up about what goes on and what to expect in this area of town...I knew I was going to need a few more drinks after her description! Then she came up with a brilliant plan: because I was so nervous, I was to visit during the day because there wasn't a whole lot of "business" going on...so that's what we did...the four of us walked to the Red Light District.
So we walked, and as we walked, I chewed all my nails down to the bone...they kept laughing at me because I was VERY unsure that I wanted to visit this notorious area. And let me tell you this, as we walked, I KNEW we had arrived, no one needed to announce what part of town we had stumbled upon, you just KNOW.
And how did I KNOW????...Well, for starters, the smell. As you walk along these tight brick sidewalks, you all of a sudden get a whiff of something, then you look, and there is a "coffee shop," and no people the shops don't smell like "coffee." How jacked up that 'they' call them coffee shops?! Poor Starbucks (by the way, we never saw a Starbucks in the entire city, only at the airport, where 2 grande lattes cost 9euro, which is $17.00!!!) Anywho, I knew that they were NOT serving coffee at these shops. No,Viv and I did not go into any coffee shops...I know, I know, I should have just gone IN..When in Rome...but seriously people, I was super scared. You should have seen the people in these shops, they looked all weird and creepy, while I looked like a very stylish tourist...ok, so maybe they didn't look weird, maybe I'm over exaggerating and my imagination has gotten the best of me, but I wasn't about to walk into a "coffee shop" and have my Tori Burch sweater smell like weed, um gross! And hello, I heard a rummer that just smelling that stuff makes you all loopy...I'm loopy enough with just one glass of wine, imagine, I don't think so! Anywho...as we continued our journey around the District, there were also shops that sold "Seeds." Yep, you guessed it, were not talking Marigold seeds, were talking pot plant seeds, what do they call it...yes, Merawanna, Cannabis (no idea how to spell it? Those are the same things, right?)
So after my eyes widened at the coffee and seed shops, my jaw then hit the ground...Ok, so I'm not going to go into that much detail, use your imagination, this is a family blog...but I think I was more shocked then anything, not really grossed out. You are walking and you look to the right, and there is this women in a "bikini" looking at you through a doorway/window. Eye contact I was not about to make...There were so many women, and some were better looking then others; some old, some young, some fat, some skinny, some maybe men? Anyway, the "District" was surprisingly large, and thank goodness, there were tons of tourist all over the place, some even pushing kids in strollers..NO JOKE! After a few blocks, I was able to pull my jaw off the ground, and was, well, use to it?...It was just crazy, and LEGAL...well, if that's what puts dinner on the table, then so be it, who am I to judge?!
Once I conquered my fear of the "District" I was all good. My cousin and her French friend had to call it a night and head back to Paris. Viv and I made our way back to the area of our hotel and had a lovely dinner al' fresco then we called it a night.
I was not prepared for Saturday, I don't think either of us were. What I'm referring too is Gay Pride. That's right, we had managed to book a weekend in Amsterdam the same weekend the Gay Pride parade was taking place. Now I have seen EVERYTHING! We walked onto the streets of Amsterdam to see people everywhere, all in town to celebrate Gay Pride '09. It was pretty amazing, the canals were full of groups of people on their boats pre-partying. Large boats, small boats, house boats, row boats, you name it they were full with people. The larger boats had huge stereo systems on them, were talking speakers the size of a suitcase and 2-6 on each boat...and then they had DJ's spinning live on the boats as they pre-partied. I've never seen anything like it before. Viv and I found a spot on the canal to watch the parade. It was great, the boats were all decorated like floats. There were different themes on the boat/floats, and you bet there was a whole lot of drag going on. I've never seen such elaborate costumes in my life.
After a while of watching float after float, my back and feet started to hurt, and I had drank enough warm wine and needed to grab a bite.

Viv and I headed off to lunch and then made our way across town to the Van Gogh Museum, a spot that I really wanted to visit. The museum has the worlds largest collection of works by Vincent van Gogh: it houses more then 200 paintings, including many very famous masterpieces like 'self-portrait' from 1887, 'Sunflowers,' 'Wheatland with Crows' Viv's favorite, 'The bedroom' and many, many more. The museum did a really good job of educating us about Van Gogh and broke up all his art work by year and location he painted his masterpieces. They focus a lot on his contemporaries and his influence on other artist, as well as talk about what influenced him. I highly recommend this museum should any of you be visiting the Netherlands. I didn't pay the extra euro's for the audio tour, and kind of regret it. The museum also has an extensive collection of works of art by other 19th century painters and sculptors. And they have this great exhibit questioning the authenticity of a few Van Gogh pieces and teach you how they determined the authenticity of these pieces using technology..pretty amazing stuff!

So after we knew way too much about this Epileptic artist who is known for cutting off his own ear, we wondered around the canals as the Gay Pride parade concluded. Our feet and backs were hurting, so what better way to rest, then to find a near by Cafe. We sat and sat and drank and drank...we drank until it was dark and dinner time was upon us. When we were walking to the cafe, we saw this cute Italian restaurant, and so after our cafe visit, we decided to head back to the Italian restaurants direction. We quickly found a table outside. All the tables were packed, inside the restaurant and outside. We felt lucky to have found a table. Now, anyone can tell you that European service sucks, but, Viv and I must have sat at that table for 20minutes before 1 of the 2 waiters in the whole joint even approached us, and they only approached us after we had to flag them down. We ordered, and we ordered a lot...we were hungry! A beer for Viv, wine for me, a bottle of Pellegrino for the table, an appetizer of fresh bread with olive tapenade, then Lasagna for Viv and I had the waiters recommendation, prawn and scallop homemade ravioli with a sage butter sauce. The meal, surprisingly, came fast and we chowed down. The food was SO good! Really, the first Italian, besides pizza, that I had eaten in a month. After staring at our empty plates for what seemed like hours, we again, had to flag a Waiter down and ask to take the plates away. We sat and sat at our table, like another 20minutes, until our original waiter came out and asked us if we had even received out food. Um, Hello dude, way to be a great server, YES we had gotten our food, and yes we had eaten it, and yes, we do want dessert. I ordered profiteroles and Viv had a cannoli. Ok, so here is were the fun begins. So, obviously, the service at this restaurant was not fast, nor even slow..it was CRAWLING! And I Viv and I knew were weren't the only ones getting bad/no service. Two tables had sat down and after a while just got up and left. Viv and I were so annoyed, and Viv went inside the restaurant on THREE occasions trying to look for someone to pay so we could leave the joint. After waiting and waiting for 45 minutes (NO JOKE) we just left! That's right.....we didn't pay for dinner! HELLO, we SO tried of waiting and waiting! They just didn't care about us paying them...we did feel bad, we liked the food and would have liked to go back to the restaurant some day, but not after we skipped out on the meal. We quickly but not so quickly walked away from the table, and then when i looked back, i saw the table next to us, who were also waiting for their cheek just as long, if not longer, took our lead and just left without paying as well. So, that was a first for me and Viv, and hopefully we won't make a habit of it...ha ha.
We walked back to the hotel, laughing and feeling a little paranoid. Then we called it a night.
Sunday rolled around before we knew it, and we woke up to a rainy, cold day. We had originally planned to wake up early and take a canal tour of the city before we had to take off for the airport. But seeing the weather, we both decided to forget about the canal tour and watch MTV instead. One of my favorite programs was on, Paris Hiltons New BFF...I haven't seen MTV in a month, I was excited and Viv got easily hooked into the program. After a few episodes of Ms. Hilton, we packed up our bags and headed for the airport. Back to London life we went.

So overall Amsterdam was an eye opener. I enjoyed the area we stayed in, it was beautiful and the Dutch food and shops were fun and interesting. The center of the city seemed dirty, crowded and just not my cup of tea. I think that if you are in the area you should visit Amsterdam, but keep in mind, there isn't a whole lot to do. 2 days is really all you need for this city.I certainly would not recommend flying from the States just to see Amsterdam, unless you are a super freak that enjoys feeling loopy...Its a stamp in my passport and I certainly came home with a few stories.

Tot Ziens Amsterdam
Hallo Dubai!!

Pictures, left to right:
1.My cousin and Viv at the Heineken Brewery
2.Canals cover the city, you get around by Vespa, Bike or Canal. The streets are so tight its hard to get a car through them.
3.Down the street from our hotel, so pictures.
4. Jaw dropping Red Light District
5.Free Beer at the Heineken Experience.
6.Gay Pride '09. Holy people everywhere!
7.Van Gogh 'Self-portrait' from 1887.