Tuesday morning we spent checking out our surrounds a little more and had a quiet lunch in the hotel grounds on the beach front - absolutely delightful there - the weather has been very kind to us whilst away and similar to home without the humidity.
Pickup time for the City tour was 2.30pm - we were taken to the main tour start point right under the nose of the Burj Al Arab - what we all know as the 'Sail' hotel in Dubai. Most people are not able to get very close to it at all and as such our tour buses all met in an allotment across the road but still in good view of the hotel so we could take those compulsory snaps!.
Our first full day in Dubai, or any other place we travel for that matter is usually one of 'gather the maps', have breakfast with maps in hand, determine where we are, what the plan is and what we do first.
The area we are staying in is 'Jumeraih' and very much full of hotels, ex-pats and tourists. The whole area is very new and almost every skyscraper in this area is made of sandstone (my highly technical opinion). It's a BUSY place! The streets in the whole area are paved, there are open air restaurants everywhere and just looking at a telecast on TV this morning about Dubai - much of what the media report is done in this are it seems - we recognised 2 or 3 spots as just outside the hotel.
We left Brisbane lunchtime Saturday bound for our ‘Egypt trip’. First stop in the Qantas lounge at the International airport – it was chocka block!! Qantas certainly has some work to do to bring it’s standards up because there certainly were none in the lounge! A bunch of kids off holidaying with families, yobbos with the sloppiest jeans etc and very hard to get a seat. Then we had to queue to get any food – shock horror – ho hum such is life!
But in all honestly, yes, Qantas people need to visit the Emirates lounges to see how to do it! Now that was special.
