Oh My, Oh My, We’ve Gone to Dubai!

Good morning! I’m coming to you from the other side of the planet here in amazing Dubai, United Arab Emirates.  I know, I know.  These are some super duper crazy times, what with the coronavirus lurking about.  You're probably wondering what on earth we were thinking coming here.  The truth of the matter is that this trip was booked well before any of the COVID-19 craziness began.  We’ve been monitoring the virus victim count over here for weeks and were ready to cancel this trip and lose all our money if things started looking too dicey.  In fact, we almost did cancel.  We almost canceled a couple of times in the days before leaving.  First, Jill got sick with a stomach bug two days before leaving.  Then my mom got the bug the next day.  I came down with a cold.  Then things went seriously sideways the day before we were due to fly out when one leg of our flight home from Dubai was suddenly canceled.  We started worrying about getting over here and not being able to get home.  We were seriously wondering if these were signs telling us that we shouldn’t go.  (In fact, Jill had a total meltdown on this very issue on the way to the airport and we almost bailed out then!  David didn’t even leave the vicinity of SFO for at least an hour in case he needed to come back and get her/us.)  We were down to the wire the day before leaving when we decided that everyone was feeling well enough to fly, the canceled flight problem was fixed and that since the virus victim count in Dubai is WAY lower than at home in California, that we should just go for it and take extra precautions to do what we can to keep ourselves healthy.  We’ve got N95 masks.  We’ve got lots of Purell.  We’ve got Clorox wipes and we’re not afraid to use them.  You should have seen us on the airplanes.  We were like some crazed four-woman hazmat team scouring every surface in and around our seats and tray tables with Clorox wipes.  You should have seen the looks on the other passengers’ faces.  Some looked at us like we were lunatic germaphobes (nailed it!), some looked at us like, “Rats! Wish I’d thought of that,” and one wise passenger even mustered up the courage to asked us if we had any extra wipes that she could use to hose down her seat.  Of course we shared.  Safety first!

So now that you understand the method to our madness, let’s get down to brass tacks and talk about this amazingly cool place that we’ve landed in.  We’ve got a lot of super cool activities planned for our brief stay.  Our days are pretty packed.  We are on an independent tour this time which basically means that Gate 1 booked our flights and hotel and offered us several excursions that we could add on if we wanted to.  This allows us a good amount of time to freewheel around this place and see things that are not included in the add-on tours.  Our first stop was the Dubai Miracle Garden, something that Jill had found out about on line. Seeing as how Ashley and I love to garden and are both basically crazy plant ladies, this was a must-do.  And actually, of all the things we have planned, this was going to be the thing we were both the most bummed to miss.  Because nothing feeds crazy plant lady addiction like touring a massive garden with giant figures all made out of plants.  Here are some of the highlights:

As you can see, this place was amazing.  A crazy plant lady’s dream come true.  

After our stroll through the gardens, it was time to head back to the hotel to get ready to go on our desert safari.  In Dubai, they offer these very popular excursions called desert safaris.  They include an activity called dune bashing - a wild ride through the Arabian Desert in a four-wheel drive SUV equipped with a roll cage that takes you up and over the dunes in a crazy zig-zag pattern.  You slip, you slide, you turn almost completely sideways and completely vertical.  It was quite the adventure, let me tell you.  We screamed, we laughed and then we screamed some more.  Ashley is going to upload some video to her Instagram later, so please head on over to her account and have a look (@_ashley_hepburn_)   We’ve been crying-laughing rewatching it all night.  

The safari was great fun - for about the first four minutes.  Then the carsickness hit me hard.  Ashley lasted all of eight minutes.  Jill and my mom were quick to follow.  All I could do was close my eyes, hold on and pray that I wasn’t going to toss my cookies in this poor man’s car.  At one point he shoved a plastic bag in my hands and started yelling, “Open the bag! Open the bag!”  I guess I was an interesting shade of green by that point and he had serious concerns for the future of his car’s upholstery.  Fortunately, we all held it together and got to our destination, a Bedouin campsite in the desert where they offer camel rides (yes, please!), falconry demonstrations, a barbecue dinner and a dinner show.  The camel ride was a total joke, unfortunately.  I’ve had longer camel rides at the zoo!  But it was still a fun experience and Ashley had never experienced riding a camel, so it wasn’t a total loss.

And of course, the Arabian Desert didn’t disappoint.

Notice the color of the sky.  That’s not pollution.  It’s dust from the desert.  It was windy out there.  It was like getting a free microdermabrasion treatment while standing among the dunes.

And while for me the Arabian Desert isn’t quite as spectacular as the Sahara (it lacks that rich, amazing copper color of the Sahara) the sunset over the Arabian Desert blew the “sunset” we saw over the Sahara away.  It’s amazing what a little sand in the air can do!

So that’s today’s adventures in a nutshell.  It’s off to bed to gear up for experiencing a different side of Dubai tomorrow.  Or possibly several different sides....