Vacation or Deployment?

How many places in the world can you go to a resort on man made islands, see a 7 star hotel in a speedboat, learn how to wrestle with an alligator, and go skiing all in one day? Ok... maybe I didn't wrestle an Alligator, but Dubai is an amazing city stuffed with more things to do than any other place I could think of.

A two hour drive with Tony, Z and Byron to start the morning is not supposed to be breath taking, but going through Dubai and its incredible architecture on the way to the Palm Islands (they made islands into the shape of a palm tree just to show they have the money to do so) was amazing. Buildings, extremely unique buildings, sprout out of the desert and look as if they are made in a Hollywood studio, not real life. Dubai's architecture is extremely unique and pushes the envelope in what should be possible.

After the drive, we arrived at the Atlantis resort (similar to the one in the Bahamas without a casino) to go to the "Lost Chambers" aquarium. While the aquarium was fairly small, it still had a good variety of interesting wildlife to see.

Once we were done with the aquarium, we took a short buggy ride to the beach in order to get on the boats. The boats took us around the Palm Islands, where from what I have seen, the houses can only be compared to those on Star Island. Mansions on man made islands with a private beach is commonplace for hundreds of families who can afford to live on the Palm Islands.

Once out of the "Crescent" we headed to the Burj Al Arab, which is the only 7 star hotel in the world. Shaped like a sailboat, the building is incredible and for the economical price of $1,800 a night (for the lowest level room) it better be incredible inside. Seeing the building up close was amazing, but it was just as fun riding in the boat at top speed over the flat waters of the gulf.


Boating to the Burj Al Arab

After seeing the Burj Al Arab, we headed towards the Dubai marina. Not only were there some incredible boats harbored in the marina, but it was surrounded by even more incredible buildings. We passed by the site of the World Championships of Parachuting, which might cause me to investigate jumping out of an airplane pretty soon.

After the boat we went to Mall of the Emirates. While a mall in name, it was more like a small city and had no real reason to ever leave. There are hundreds of stores, plenty of restaurants, banks, movie theater, and almost anything else you can think of (including an indoor ski slope, toboggan track, zorb slope, and penguin interaction area). Yes, the guy who doesn't like cold weather, staying in the middle of the desert, took a few hours out of my busy day to go skiing. Z and I tried skiing while, Tony decided to show how great of a snowboarder he was. Not only was it really fun, but it was great to get a rush going down a mountain at high speeds. While I got better each run, I could not master one part of the mountain and fell every time. The beard came in very handy to not only keep me warm, cushion the face plant during falls, but also kept snow in so I could drink going down the mountain. Its like the swiss army knife of body hair.












 Before                                                                                                                After

Me and Z Skiing
Tony Snowboarding
After skiing for a few hours, we were sufficiently tired and called it quits so we had enough time to go to a very Emiratish restaurant, The Cheesecake Factory. After a wonderful meal (Z made me have some of his cheesecake) we walked around for a short while before heading back to base.


While waiting for the bus, in a matter of 5 minutes the cars below came through the valet area. Probably very similar to what you would see in the second best mall in American cities...

 

-SITS