Go Big & Go Home

danielcarney
May 13, 2016
3 min read

Hello from 47,000 feet up in the Air, the last blog for 30 days of 30.

We arrived into Dubai a few days ago and only for a few days. Our chauffeur driver was waiting for us when we landed in Abu Dhabi, the UAE's Capital city about about 150km's south of Dubai on the Persian gulf.

We landed early at about 5:15 am, and we headed straight for the new Arrivals Lounge in the Airport after we cleared immigration.

We stayed her for nearly 2 hours, hot showers, breakfast, TVs comfy lounges and considering we thought we may not be able to get into our room until guaranteed time of 2-3pm why not.

We did however get in straight away and we needed just that extra hour's sleep which was perfect, 2 Queen size beds and a room big enough to fit at least 6 people.

We had southern views out over the palm and below us was one of the pools.

Atlantis is quite the place and boy was that place expensive, it was that expensive that it took us a long time to work out the exchange rate as we just couldn't believe the prices that we were calculation.

1 Beer was 55-65 AED/DHS (about $23 AUD). We did somewhat over budget for about 90% of the trip, I truly under budgeted for Dubai, I heard that the Marina in Dubai and the Atlantis are the most expensive places. I was ok with it just a bit of a shock not only to my back pocket but my credit card as I had USD but the rate for US was worse so, it will be fixed up in the next day or so.

The resort was beautiful and another grandeur entrance and Aaron calculated the would have been about 4 Million dollars worth of cars sitting on the driveway.

After we surfaced we went for a look around the resort, we at lunch by the pool it was ordinary for the prices we paid to be fair.

We decided that we would spend the after noon in The Lost Chambers (aquariums) before our pick up at 3:30 for our Dune Dessert Safari.

There was about 22 Chambers and most of the things we had seen before, but it was really cool going with the whole theme of Atlantis and the underwater city.

We booked the dune Safari quite last minute, only a few days before in fact. Glad we did it was a lot of fun and somewhat hair raising over the tops of dunes.

We got some great photos and also videos.

After this hour long dune 4WD we set for our BBQ camp in the desert and some traditional arabic food and music and activities. Falafel, breads, Humous, Lamb Kofta's and chicken.

It was delicious. We also got to ride camels and smoke some Humbly bubbly.

It was a great afternoon/evening.

We arrived back at the hotel about 9:30 and we were wrecked, what a day.

Tomorrow we are staying around the resort, checking out the Aquaventure and the Relaxing by the pool.

We went to Bread Kitchen also this night, this is Gordon Ramsay's restaurant and it was very good and included in our package with a small $18pp surcharge, for 3 courses I thought that was the most reasonable thing we had paid.

The Last day in Dubai we were a little dusty, as after dinner last night we were walking back from the restaurant and heard this amazing artist singing and playing "nothing else matters". We thought we would stop in for 1 last drink, which turned into 5 at $18 each that escalated quickly and only because she was so good and we were drinking espresso martinis. DEADLY.

So after checkout, we made arrangements to hire a car (Audi with Air Con) and driver for a few hours, it wasn't cheap but hey why stop there. We went to see the Burj Khalifa, The Dubai Mall, and the Mall of the Emirates and a quick picture stop in front of the Burj Al Arab.