Dubai Desert Safari

Firstly, apologies for the lack of posts lately. I've had this one sitting in the scheduler for awhile now, but just wasn't feeling the motivation to get it done. I really need to start regularly scheduling some time on my 'to-do' list to post about some of the cool things I've done over the last few months. This post is actually way overdue, since these pictures were taken in June last year! My sisters came to visit me for a few days in Dubai, the first time any of my family had come to visit since I moved to Dubai in 2010. Better late then never I guess!

We had limited time, since they had both taken tie out of busy work schedules, but the main motivating factor was that Madonna was performing in Abu Dhabi. My eldest sister is the biggest fan, and I said to them, why not come for a quick visit AND catch the concert? Lucky for them, since Madonna then cancelled the Aussie legs of her tour. So at the age of "more than 35", eldest sis finally realised her dream of seeing Madonna perform live, something she'd wanted to do since she was a teenager.

Anyway, on to the photos. In the short time we had, we decided to do the typical Dubai Desert Safari. I'd originally wanted to go with the company affiliated with my employer, but a friend told me try another one that she'd been happy with. She must have got them on a good day, because while we had a fun time, there were a few aspects that we really weren't that happy with, but I think it was due more to the individual guys taking our tour than to all of them being that way (I hope)

Old area of Dubai

Earlier in their visit we did the whole Gold Souk/Abra ride thing, which was fun but very hot in the middle of summer. Cheap though, at 2dhs or so a ride. Whee!

Dubai Creek

After calling it quits since it was too hot, we took a ride to check out the Atlantis Hotel. Unfortunately, since my prior visit they had blocked off access to all except hotel guests, so you couldn't see any of the awesome rooms that I had seen. Shame, but understandable, since hordes of tourists had been turning up with tour guides too lazy to actually guide, and had just dumped them to wander for an hour or two.

The famous gold vending machine. You can buy small (really small) bars, coins and pendants, some with touristic stamps of Dubai landmarks on them. Still worth $$, though.

After Atlantis we went to our hotel for the pickup. The 4WD showed up, along with a khandoura-and-dishdasha wearing driver who turned out to be Omani. Two couples were in with us, making for a bit of a squishy ride. After driving about 30mins, we took the usual stop at that random petrol/snack shop on the Al Ain road then headed into the desert for the start.

Real dunes!

It was a liiiiitle disappointing that instead f getting to sandboard, they parked up with some other cards and we ended up waiting about 30mins for a bunch of other cars to join us, while the drivers sat around talking and smoking. I'm not sure if there was never any sand boarding on the agenda, or if we just lucked out and got the lazy ones. :/ So, took the chance for some happy snaps.

I got sand... in my shoes....

I love the colours in the sand, so pretty

Once the other cars arrived, it was time for some dune bashing. While it was fun, our driver seemed to get particular kicks when people were asking to tone it down, lol... Stopped just in tie before we all got car sick. So, if you get easily motion sick, skip this bit, haha!

After the dune bashing, we got a bit of time to sit outside, by this time it hard started to cool down so we could take some pics together. If you didn't know any better, we could have been the only people there :)

My fave photo from this outing

After the desert, we headed back to a camp, on the way stopping for photo ops with camels. We had all seen them before, so no big deal, but the other tourists went nuts, it was kind of funny.

An A380 on its way somewhere fun...

I really like this photo, camels are actually very interesting to photograph and
are capable of so many expressions.

Then it was to the camp for traditional henna painting, dinner and a show. We did the henna, me completely forgetting that I would still have the marks at work. oops!

Luckily I had 2 weeks off, so the henna marks were mostly gone by the
time I had to fly again. Good thing because my trousers no longer fit at
that stage- too much eating!

The show consisted of a belly dancer, and then a tanoura show and a whirling dervish. He was good, went for at least 7 minutes non-stop. Don't know how they do it!

Yummy dinner.

All in all it was a fun outing with my sisters, I'd like to do it again for the full experience, so I think next time I'd try a different company. Want to see the falcons again and also try the sand boarding :) If you visit Dubai, do try the desert safari, especially if you only have a short time. Combine it with a visit to the Gold Souk and an abra ride and you have the traditional UAE experience....

More Toronto

After collapsing into bed after our big Niagara tour, a few of us met for breakfast & filled up on bacon, waffles & eggs. (Yay!!) before meeting up to explore a bit of the city.


The architecture in Toronto is pretty cool; lots of new mixed in with old. Despite it not being the depths of winter it was still cooooold. Leaves were orange on the trees which I was fascinated by as we tend not to have deciduous trees in Oz- they just suddenly die & go brown if at all, or they stay green throughout. Being so dry things tend to go green in winter and brown in summer, total reverse haha!


It was really great to be in a mall that wasn't a gigantic, air conditioned fridge. I really liked all the displays they had up and the mood leading up to Christmas was very festival with cool window dressings and even a big Christmas tree!


We also visited the CN Tower, once the tallest freestanding structure in the world (Enter Burj Khalifa, circa 2009). I'd always wanted to go since hearing friends talk about it. Also, I decided it might be fun to visit all the tall things I could on my layovers. I've done Sydney Tower, CN Tower, Eiffel Tower, London Eye, Auckland Skytower, Petrin in Prague (ok not such a big one but hey) and of course when my family come to visit I'll be hitting the Burj! :P



The views are pretty cool, they even have the see through toughened glass panels in the floor so you can have fun freaking out your friends by pushing them onto it. Of course lots of silly pics ensued, with us trying to make it look like we were falling though the floor.



Obviously their copy needs some re-editing ;)


By far my favourite part was being able to see across to the island in the harbour where the (imaginatively named) Toronto Island Airport is. I recall it being actually name after some sports guy, but can't remember what that sub-name is. (Billy Bishop, thank you Wikipedia!) It was really cool being able to watch the planes take off and land; if we got staff tickets on Porter Airlines I'd be so tempted to just take a flight somewhere and back for fun next time I'm there! I want to see the Porter uniform up close, lol the things that amuse me!






Trains far far below looking like a scene from Thomas the Tank Engine.



It was FREEZING!!! I am wearing my goose-down jacket which I bought in Korea for the bargain price of 40,000 won. (About $35AUD) It is super warm but it wasn't enough. Underneath I had my super duper thick Korean long leggings (seriously they're like jodhpurs) and jeans, a long singlet, a top, a jumper a scarf, gloves and a beanie! This jacket got passed around when I went to Niagara when one of the poor crew realised she'd left her coat at home and couldn't even leave to go buy coffee!!! :( She said it saved her life, haha. Lucky I packed two coats in a fit of outfit indecision...


We basicalyl walked around looking at the sights & trying not to die from the cold- remembering that we'd come from close to 50'C to about minus a million. AFter only 30 minutes we were scrambling to find a coffee shop. Finally we found one- attached to a pet store no less- where dogs were enjoying their "puppacinos" with their owners. Strange, but kind of fun!


Sad story on the harbour about a man and a bird.

It says "For the past six years, Thomas Pitkin of Scarborough, Ontario would meet Charlie, a black-crowned night-heron at this location every day between mid-April and mid-October to feed him roast chicken. A natural fish-eater, Charlie spurned any type of canned fish in favour of his chicken treat. The two bonded over this daily feeding and afforded countless site visitors and up-close view of this special bird. Thomas Pitkin passed away in May, 2010. He is sadly missed by his many friends but none more so than by his pal, Charlie, who still shows up at this location forlornly looking for Thomas." :(









Toronto is a nice city to visit, I just hope next time it'll be in summer so I can enjoy the outdoors instead of freezing my butt off! At least I'll be within throwing distance of my good friend Krysta!

Photo Post: Visit to Niagara Falls!

It's been awhile since I've made any 'proper' posts. Sometimes blogging feels a bit overwhelming, especially when I've been working a lot and feel tired. The fact that posting pics on Blogger is a bit of a PITA doesn't help. So, I've been looking back through all my photos that I need to post about and there are a LOT. Also, since it's been a long time since I took some of those pictures, I've forgotten a lot of details.

What I've decided to do for the older ones is to just post some highlight photos from those trips, and if you really like them I can always post some more from that place. More recent or memorable trips will probably get some sort of commentary. I'm just not in the mood for writing a lot and I figure at least posting some photos is better than nothing- anything to get out of this blah blogging mood!

Last night I took some time to just go through my folders and use a batch editor to resize copies of the photos to make for easier uploading. I can remember as far back as when I went to Niagara Falls, and I don't think I posted any of those pictures yet so I'll start with them.

I'd never been to North America before, and all I kept hearing about was how difficult and tiring the flight is, and how COLD it would be there. Luckily for me, I got the longer 3 day layover, whcih gave plenty of time to sleep and recover from the flight, sightsee, then get soem sleep before the return trip.

While the flight was long, it was nowhere nearly as bad as the horror stories had led me to believe. I think this was in part due to the miracle that the flight (for once) was only half full- good for me as I'd stayed up late hanging out with a friend the night before and had got no sleep!



A few of the crew decided to take a bus tour to Niagara Falls; the first stop was a wine college where we did some wine tasting and got to walk around outside. It was pretty but COLD. Then we were off to visit Niagara-on-the-Lake- a totally gorgeous little town full of old houses and which probably cost a bomb to purchase property in. We didn't get as much time in the town as I would have liked, but I did manage to run around snapping some photos to take i nthe prettiness and also grab a pastry to eat before we were off to the next stop- a lookout with a view over the river.






We were all very excited to get our first glimpse of the Falls, but we had to wait impatiently while our driver found us a parking space in the proper spot for tour buses. We were then released for a certain amount of time before we had to meet for lunch. Of course we ran over to take photos immediately :P



The power & sound of the falls is amazing- according to our tour guide the Falls weren't even at their peak when we visited... they divert a lot of it for electricity & to stop the rock eroding so much.


The weather, while cold, was perfect, with only a little bit of mist & spray and just enough sunshine to throw rainbows everywhere. It was so cool and of course perfect for our pictures.






We ate lunch in this restaurant which overlooks the falls, it was great to just watch all the rainbows come and go. Afterwards we still had a bit of time to look around and enjoy the nice day.


Our next stop was to a museum to see some films about Niagara and also some of the items on display which included a variety of vessels that people had used to go over the falls throughout the years. They ranged from simple barrels, to barrels with oxygen tanks and up to sophisticated spaceship-looking pods.


By the time we left the museum it was getting dark, on our way back to the bus we saw some Christmas lights in the park so ran over to have a look. Of course while Christmas is observed by some people in Dubai, there are not as many lights and decorations as we are used to back home so the chance to go look at sparkly lights was too good to miss.


I found this placement especially interesting- the Islamic mosque placed next to the Jewish menorah...! the other in this series was the three wise men and the star.


This blue arrangement made me think of aliens and UFOs, it was sparkling but I couldn't really get that in the photo very well. Soon it was time to head back to the bus, a good thing as we were all starting to get hit by the jetlag and just wanted to go back to the hotel for food & sleep.



I really enjoyed my visit to Niagara Falls and hopefully can go back one day during the summer!