Day 1 - Dubai

We arrived into Dubai at 5am-ish and it was already 33 degrees!  After checking into the hotel, we went straight to breakfast - although we couldn’t really manage much of it because they had pretty much continuously fed us on the plane.  To get a bit of exercise in, after being sedentary for so long, we then went for a stroll through the Mall of the Emirates which the hotel is attached to.  It is not the biggest - but still the size of a small town!  Three floors of retail everything you could possibly look for.  However, the shops weren’t open so we were able to just wander - unhindered by the constant cries for your attention that come when everything's open.  Honestly, the spruikers are pretty exhausting - they are in the high end malls as well as the markets and are pretty insistent.  Polite refusals just don’t have any effect.  The Tonies realised that the shops they were looking for are actually in Dubai Mall, so they headed off there, while Brett and I had a nap - but not before wandering through the supermarket that was in the mall.  It is mind-blowing!  As large as a regular sized mall at home, starting as a supermarket at one end and finishing up more like a Briscoes at the other - but everything in supersize.

When the Tonies arrived back we went to the hotel pool, to find that we were the only ones there, so had the swim-up bar (and the barman) to ourselves.  Warm water, cold gin, nobody else around - easy to get used to for sure, until we got the bill that is!  The cost of living here in Dubai is pretty steep, and so are the tourist charges.

Late afternoon, we left the hotel on a desert safari tour.  An hours drive from the hotel and we were off-roading through the dunes to a spot that was perfect to watch the sun go down.  After that we had a BBQ dinner at a campsite - but this wasn't your Kiwi sausages in bread. Instead, we were treated to a whole feast of Arabian delights.  There was the opportunity for camel riding or dune surfing but actually we were so knackered we just popped ourselves down at a table and wished we were in bed - it was just a little beyond all of us to be able to enjoy the last couple of hours of that adventure.  Lesson learned - even when flying business class, you need an early night on day one.