Jacqui and Richard Abroad: Sunday, December 15th

Our weekend in Dubai was very nice, except for all the delays we had. It started at the airport on the way out Thursday night. We took the slow line for passport control; the guy in the other line was passing two persons to one for our line. But we had time so it wasn't a big deal. Next, our 90 minute flight was delayed by 80 minutes. Nothing you can do as I'd rather have fix the problems with the plane while it's on the ground as opposed to going Oops, in the air! But still, we could almost have been there by the time we took off. Once we got to the airport, we again took the wrong line, this time spending about 1½ hour to go through passport control, while the line next to us would have taken about 45 minutes. Finally, we had to take a cab from the airport as we landed in Sharjah instead of Dubai (it would be like landing at Toronto Island instead or Pearson International); that took about 50 minutes as the driver couldn't find the hotel. We finally checked in at 1 am, while thinking we'd be there around 9 at the latest. Jacqui was starting to get annoyed!

We stayed at the Movenpick hotel, which was very nice. We visited the Mall of the Emirates on Saturday pm; the place is amazing. They do have a ski hill, with tubing and sleding. They also have a lot of stores, with a lot of them that we can't afford to go in (even with my Visa card!).

Back at the hotel, they had a choir singing Christmas carols, as well as a visit from Santa (the real one!); it was really nice as I find it very hard to grasp that we are in the holiday season. We went for a walk along the Marina mall on Sunday. It was very nice. Temperature in Dubai was a lot warmer than in Kuwait (max. temps of high 20 - low 30, as opposed to low to mid teens in Kuwait).