After having a wonderful Christmas adventure last year we opted for a Christmas in Saudi Arabia this year. I got to use my creativity a bit to bring the holiday spirit out but it turned out amazing! We focused on enjoying our community this year and did an ornament exchange and gingerbread house making. We even got to have a Christmas eve visit with santa. The only thing that would have made it better would have been family but we did get to enjoy Christmas dinner with some wonderful friends.
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| Maddy's gingerbread airplane |
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| Decorating our 'Saudi tree' |
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| Magazine trees - I loved making these as a kid! |
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| Thanks Pinterest for our fireplace and Ninja turtle ornaments |
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| Our tree all decorated everything found in saudi, including my custom tree skirt |
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| Our snowman |
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| Couldn't forget the door, after I made it the neighbor's son said "look it's christmas at maddy's house" |
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| Who says you can't have Christmas in saudi? |
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| Maddy's trees by her bed |
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| Putting out her reindeer food on christmas eve |
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| Maddy stayed up until after 1am to try and "peek on Santa" but luckily he still came! He even remembered to grab a gift from grandma and nana's house. |
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| Whose gift was it?? |
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| Maddy loves her singing camel |
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| The wrapping paper was like plastic |
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On the 30th we headed to Dubai to start our long holiday exploring. Thanks to our warm weather destinations I was able to fit us in three carry-ons for nearly three weeks! This is our second trip to Dubai but there is so much to do that we could go back over and over. I had pre-booked most of our trip since we knew our stay would be short this time. Once we got off the plan Trey surprised me by saying that he had looked it up and we could get to the apartment by Metro. I love public transport but just assumed we would have to take a taxi (the thing I hate spending money on the most). Even though it was later in the evening the Dubai metro is great, it's easy to navigate, safe, relatively inexpensive and not very crowded. We rented an apartment behind the mall of the emirates for easy access to the metro line so after a bit of searching we were settled into our apartment. We opted for delivery that night and enjoyed some really good arabic food (it's amazing to me how different it is in different areas).
On the 31th we headed to the Mall of the Emirates for the Penguin experience at ski dubai. Ski Dubai is this amazing indoor ski village within the Mall of the Emirates, there really is nothing like it in the world. Maddy and I suited up for an encounter with the penguins. We got to hear about their history, meet them and even give one a hug. Maddy really enjoyed it and asked a couple questions to the trainers about what penguins eat and if they wear jackets for the cold. We learned a lot of the penguins were born in the San Antonio zoo so they were native Texans like us!
After our Penguin adventure and some lunch and shopping we headed to our apartment to rest a bit and change for our new years night. Last year we booked a river cruise in London and it gave us a great view of the fireworks with a safe environment for Maddy and not tons of standing around and waiting. We decided to opt for that option in Dubai also, last year Dubai set records for having the longest and most expensive fireworks display over the marina so we decided to do a cruise of the marina hoping we could see both shows. I forgot how bad the 'sand fog' can get and it didn't work out like we hoped.
First off we headed to Ruth's Chris for our New Years Eve dinner, it was a bit of a hike from the metro stop but it was worth it. The food was wonderful and we got fun silly party favors! Next we hailed a cab and headed to the marina to catch our boat for our cruise, Dubai is a bit tricky in that you can't get alcoholic beverages everywhere so although I would have opted for a pre-cruise drink we ended up with mocktails but a good view of the water. We ended up meeting a family from Oman who live in Dubai, we talked for a while and Maddy enjoyed playing with their kids.
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| New Year's Eve candlelight dinner at Ruth's Chris |
When we finally boarded our original boats they didn't have seats for us and moved us to another boat. It turned out to be for the best because we got to sit on the upper deck. They had a couple entertainers on the boat but no kids activities like promised, Maddy didn't really seem to mind though she was enjoying the hat and noise makers. Once our boat was packed we headed out on the marina. I expected a little commentary of the sights but the view was nice. They were late handing out "champagne" (non-alcoholic) and doing the new years countdown but we still got to bring in the new year together. Our view of the fireworks show was lackluster and the boat kept moving around so we couldn't really enjoy it. Overall Dubai failed to meet our high new years standards, better luck next time! We got back to port around 2am after the SLOWEST return journey (literally I think we could have swam faster) and started our journey home. We weren't able to hail a cab but Maddy was wide awake so we decided to walk the 30 min to the metro station. I was impressed with the police presence and lack of drunken fools around, big difference from London last year! After getting to the Mall of the Emirates stop and walking all the way around the mall we finally got back to our apartment around 3:30am. We got to check Dubai off our New Years list even though it didn't live up to expectations it was still a wonderful experience.
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| Happy New Year 2015 |
The following morning after sleeping in and lounging around our apartment we headed to the Dubai Mall to check out the giant aquarium and underwater zoo. We had a great time exploring the aquarium and we headed back to our apartment ready to hit the road in the morning. We still have things to visit in Dubai and thanks to it being so close to home we can head back for another long weekend. Our driver to the airport gave us some interesting perspective on Dubai since he has lived and worked there for 13 years. It's amazing how young of a country it is and how caught in the new-old transition plays out. Thailand here we come!!
