Wednesday, October 11, 2006

October 11th, 2006 In Transit - Dubai, United Arab Emirates

October 11, 2006
In Transit – Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Last night we made our way to the Frankfurt International Airport (getting there several hours early) and waited for our flight. We were both excited by the recliners at the airport and surprised by the multiple security checkpoints.

Our flight on Emirates Air was totally amazing! Each seat had a 10” television! Even more impressive, it was a touch screen that allowed users to pick whether or not to play games (free – and able to play multiplayer between different seats), watch movies (free), send text messages to phones (charge), or listen to music. Correspondingly, each seat had a remote that doubled as a video game controller. Still, my favorite thing was that the other side of the remote/controller was a phone. As expected, the phone could be used to make international calls (very expensive) by sliding a credit card along the side of the remote. The phone could also be used to call other seats for free! Needless to say, B and I used this feature incessantly. We called each other and numerous random seats (no one picked up…)

After watching The Devil Wears Prada, I fell asleep. I woke up just as our plane was landing (6:40 – accounting for a two hour time change). We got our luggage and made our way toward the exit. As we left the airport we saw a guy with a sign that had my name on it to take us to our hotel! It made me feel important ☺.

Once we got to the hotel we fell asleep. I slept until about 13:30 (B until 14:15) and then decided to check out the hotel. Our room is fairly nice. We have our own refrigerator, stove, sink, microwave, washing machine, and bathroom ($35 per person). The hotel is also equipped with a (small) pool and (very small) weight room. Unfortunately, they do not have wireless internet! Instead, we will be forced to walk a block or two to the mall and pay per hour…

Once B got out of bed and ready for the day we decided to explore the area around our hotel. As soon as we walked outside we were blasted by hot air (this was a very dramatic change from the cool days we had gotten used to in Frankfurt). We made our way toward Dubai creek (which splits the city in two) and walked along its banks. Along the way we watched some locals fishing in the creek with string, a weight, and some bread. We also passed through a local market and examined some cheap clothing…


On our way back to the hotel we decided to stop at the supermarket and get some food for the next several days. It was nice to enter the large, air-conditioned building.

As soon as we got back to the hotel (just after 16:00) we started devouring our food. It was our first meal of the day! Unintentionally, we came very close to obeying Ramadan (which is going on right now in Dubai – so nowhere offers food while the sun is up).

We are currently at a mall a few blocks from our hotel using the internet. We are figuring out some activities to do for the rest of our stay here in Dubai and figuring out how to see all of the cool stuff here. I have no idea what the evening will bring!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

sounds fun! make sure to get that picture of the island for me!

–Stevie

Anonymous said...

The warm weather sounds good! Can't wait to see more pictures of Dubai. Will you go to the indoor ski mountain?

Love the new blogger map. Interesting to see that you hsve readers from around the world!

Anonymous said...

Hey Sean--I forgot to sign in! This is Mom.

Stu Holdren said...

That flight sounds awesome. I can see you and B being rediculous on that flight. Who won in the video games?

Hey, remember when Hakeem would be going through ramadan and it would affect his game? I was like, "Hakeem, you have the Dream Shake, you don't even need the ramadan!"

But he didn't listen.