Friday 11 May 2012

Day 4 - Dubai Double Decker May 4th

A decent night’s sleep with virtually no noise from outside or inside.  Now when we planned our trip, we had forgotten that in Islamic countries, the Sabbath is on a Friday and virtually nothing opens until 2pm...  Not that we could have changed the dates anyway. The Dubai (included) breakfast was also excellent, which set us up for the day.

As nothing would be open, we elected to walk down to the canal and possibly to the museum.  It was hot!

Several tour buses had decanted their cargo just as we arrived so we opted to skip it this time and carried on walking through to little India (yes, another one).  As soon as we set foot in the street of textiles, we were assailed by persistent sales people trying to force us into buying.  We resisted.  Once through to the main road, we managed to get straight onto the Hop On Hop off bus but this time, it was a hefty 220AED (about $70 – paid by Visa) but that included a one hour canal ride and also admission to the museum.  Still a substantial increase over Singapore, but, as we also found out last year, the two routes are quite extensive.

We did the Red route all the way round and hopped off again, just one stop before the start point, in time for the 1:30pm canal cruise.  A very pleasant hour and an opportunity to either sit or stand, grab a sandwich and a coke, before heading back to a bus.

We saw that the HOHO (Hop On Hop Off!) bus going to the Dubai Mall had to do most of the 2 hour route to get there, so we opted for a taxi instead.

We missed the aquarium last year, so this time, we didn’t!  The queue to go through it was very long and it was quite expensive, so we headed for the food court instead.  As with everything else about the mall, it was massive and extensive.  This time we opted for London fish and chips – which wasn’t a bad choice, but we have had better.

We returned to the HOHO bus but instead of it going where we wanted, it had taken us away from the mall to their terminus at the Wafi centre and that was the last run of the day!  We ventured into the upmarket Egyptian styled Wafi centre, only to have our ears assailed by some wally on an over loud PA system on some spin the wheel promotion.  It must have been about 110 decibels at least, so we walked out again with our ears ringing.

A taxi back home to the hotel was then the most logical option, but we didn’t know that there were several 4 Points Sheratons and the driver didn’t speak good English, but we got there eventually, albeit on the opposite side of the dual carriageway road as we had spotted the hotel as we approached!

Before turning in, I checked with the front desk, our pick up back to the airport.  A good job I did as when we eventually got through, they had us down for a 6am pick up – about 75 minutes earlier than necessary.  Again, no time had been stated on our paperwork.   Black mark number 2.

We crashed out early again at about 9:30pm. We are leaving Dubai tomorrow on a 9:50am flight and catching up with the rest of our group for the Emirates flight to Venice.  The others have flown straight from Auckland, via Melbourne, so would have been on the go for quite a while. Rather them than us. 

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