Dubai Day 1

As mentioned in our last post, it was just Liberation/National Day here in Kuwait. While that means days of celebrations for Kuwaitis, it meant a five day weekend for us. We had heard that there would be a wide variety of tantalizing activities for us if we decided to stay in country. We were promised drag racing up Gulf Road, a country wide water fight that lasted for days and did not take into account willing participation, the worst traffic ever, along with many other things. As good as all of those things sounded we opted to leave Kuwait and liberate ourselves from the mayhem.

Our liberation of choice was a trip to Dubai. Dubai as a destination has been on our radar for awhile. Now, if asked if we could explain why it is on our radar, not sure if we could do that. We had always heard that it is this strange city of the future and that it has sprung up just over the last ten years. With not a huge agenda we set out to explore Dubai and see what it had to offer.

After a evening of travel we arrived into Dubai safe and sound. Our first stop was at the duty free to pick up some beverages since we had a feeling that we might get thirsty from our sightseeing. We tasted a few of our beverages upon arrival at our hotel just to make sure that the Jim Beam that we had purchased was not poison, or a mirage. Good news, it was neither. With a little burboun in our bellies we headed to bed as we had a big day.

We slept in nice an late on our first day of vacation until 4:30. We had signed up to participate in the Dubai Desert Run 10k race and had to get ourselves out to the starting line. Flash forward a 40 minute cab ride into the desert and we are at the starting line. The race was a overall great success. It was a beautiful morning, we made great time, and there were camels running beside us. At one point in time during the race Heidi commented out loud, "camels, really?? camels? what is my life?" After crossing the finish line and receiving our medals (you have to love a race where everyone medals), we rehydrated with a cup of coffee and got a cab back to the city.

The rest of day one was spent just the way it should be. We were able to go out to a great lunch and enjoy a meal that revolved heavy around pork and beer while sitting outside in a wonderful and green setting. We took a serious mid day nap and followed that by an evening of exploring downtown Dubai. In an evening we saw the worlds tallest building, saw an amazing water show, and then rode home in maybe the worlds most crowded metro. Overall it was a wonderful way to start our trip.

Day two will be on the way tomorrow.

Duty free shopping in Dubai makes Adam a very happy guy.

Dubai has a clean, efficient, and useful metro. It became our way to navigate the city.

Post Desert Race face. All smiles with our medals.

After our race we headed to the Irish Village to refuel and to partake in all activities that are illegal in Kuwait. Heidi rocked the free hat like nobody's business.

The Burj Khalifa made Adam feel even shorter than he normally does.

Heidi waiting for the water show to start outside of the Burj.

Even if the water show was only about 39 seconds long, it was still cool.