Dubai Part 2: Dune Buggy in the Desert!

Hi!

On Friday, we got up bright and early for our desert dune buggying adventure. We were picked up at 7:30 and we drove about an hour into the desert. There is a lot of sprawl around Dubai, I was surprised that the city didn’t drop off immediately. Even half an hour out into the desert, there were still high rises and the occasional housing development. As we got even further outside the city, there was an area that’s planned to have a number of amusement parks. One of them is done, but there’s an unfinished and currently abandoned Universal Studios that’s still awaiting a restart after the recession stopped the project. The recession is almost over here the way it is in the rest of the world and there is plenty of construction going on, but I guess this project is still stalled.

 

Desert!

Once we got out into the desert, we deflated our tires a bit (like you do, apparently) and went off-road, where we met up with our buggy! We would get to drive our own buggy—following a lead car because we don’t know anything about how to drive in the desert and where to go—around the desert for an hour! They gave us a quick rundown on how to do it (dear Daddy, thank you for making me drive a manual!) and we were off! I drove first. One thing that’s really important for the buggy and for driving on sand in general is that you can’t stop on an uphill. If you do, you’ll just spin your back wheels (it’s rear wheel drive) and dig them into the ground, making you more stuck. You also have to accelerate a lot more for the same movement, and run the vehicle at pretty high RPMs to make sure you have enough power. It was a 6-speed transmission, but we only used 1^st and 2^nd gears.

 
Martin and our ride!

I was doing pretty well until the first time they went down a really steep dune—the lead vehicle just goes vertical and disappears—and I slowed down just before I came to the cliff. Unfortunately, the part just before the cliff was a very slight uphill and I got stuck! Our lead car came back and pulled us out, and we were off again. I didn’t get stuck after that, and we got to drive through a herd of camels, up down and around dunes, and all over the desert until it was Martin’s turn.

 

Me driving!

 

Getting rescued.

 

 Camels!!

 

Following the pace car. It looks like the Mars Rover footage. 

He did much better than me, and soon we stopped for some sandboarding! That’s exactly what it sounds like: you strap on a snowboard and go down a dune! The trick is that sand is much heavier and has much more friction than snow, so you can’t really turn but you don’t go quite so fast either. Still, it’s a bit scary to just go straight down a steep dune in a way that would kill you on a snowboard! The hardest part was climbing back up—you don’t want to board on a lame dune but getting back up a good steep tall one is rough!

 

I love this picture so much.

 

Boarding!

 

The climb

 

My turn!

 

Whee!

Video of my last run.

We hit the sand again, and our guide warned Martin that we were doing the big dunes now and we needed “more power.” I thought some of the dunes we’d done earlier were pretty big! We would ride up one side of the dune and down the same side in a kind of half pipe maneuver that was always an adventure because you need tons of acceleration to avoid getting stuck on the way up, but then it’s almost impossible to turn back down the dune because you were getting pulled to the outside of the curve. Sometimes we could drift a little and make the turn, but Martin and I had already had close calls where we almost rolled ourselves back down the dune (no worries, that happens and it’s not too dangerous, just very sandy).

 

Lead vehicle and us.

 

Martin driving!

We took off, headed for the big dunes. Martin did great on the first few, but then we had a really really big one and just as he was about to pull us out of it, we started to lose traction (read: we almost rolled so we only had two wheels on the sand) and we got stuck! We had the engine going so hard at the time that we finally came to rest the back tires threw a huge wave of sand over the top of the vehicle and we got covered! The guide laughed at us and pulled us out, and we were off again. Back through the camels to where we had started, and our dune buggying adventure was over. We both slept in the car the whole way back.

 

Martin driving again!

 

Going into the camels!

 

Camel! In the desert!

 

When we got home around 1:30, we ordered in lunch (a big luxury that we really can’t afford in Zurich), showered and excavated our shoes.

   

Dubai Part One: Disneyland for Grownups

Hello!

Martin has a consulting internship right now that has him working out of Dubai, and I got to go visit him this weekend! Beyond being completely fantastic to see him, it was an amazing weekend. I don’t think I would have gone to Dubai without a reason, but it was really cool and we got to do some things we wouldn’t have otherwise.

I worked a Wednesday morning and headed to the airport for my afternoon flight. It was pouring rain and cold in Zurich like it’s been for most of May (we’re in the upper 40s for our highs, Fahrenheit!), so I was extra excited to actually see the sun and maybe get some bloodflow back into my toes.

  

I made friends with the flight attendants on the way there. She just got engaged!

Martin was flying in from Saudi Arabia where his project is located at the same time I was from Zurich, so we met up at the airport around midnight and took a cab home. The airport is on the opposite side of Dubai from the marina, where Martin’s apartment is, so we had about 25 minutes of cab ride to stare out the windows at everything.

This is the Dubai marina! Obviously I did not take this picture.  

The Marina Mall is the round thing in the bottom right on the near side of the water.

Thursday morning we got up and went for a run around the marina. It was great for me to get to see everything, but I have to admit that the 3-mile run nearly killed me because I’m so unused to heat! Going from 40F to 90F plus humidity is a bit of a killer. The marina is a newer area full of high rises surrounding a canal that connects to the sea. We’re close to the famous palm tree-shaped island off the coast of Dubai, and there are lots of restaurants along the water. After the run we went for breakfast at a really fun restaurant in the Marina Mall.

 

At the marina after breakfast! 

There are a lot of malls in Dubai, and they’re a very big deal. I think it’s a combination of air conditioning, awesome construction budgets, and car-based transportation culture (good luck finding sidewalks to wander down!) plus the tradition of having souks, which are basically malls before malls. More on souks later. The malls there have the usual movie theaters and food courts, but some of the bigger ones have theme parks and aquariums (Dubai Mall), or even an indoor ski slope (Mall of the Emirates)!

 

Fish at the Dubai Mall!

 

After lunch we walked to the beach, which is really close to the apartment. The beaches there are pretty amazing; fine sand that’s so light in color it doesn’t burn your feet, very impressive seashells, and the crazy-warm water of the Persian Gulf. Getting in the water—even coming from 90 or 100 degrees plus—isn’t cold at all. You barely feel it on your skin, but it’s still refreshing because of the wind on your skin when you’re swimming. We couldn’t stay long at the beach because I haven’t seen sun in months and there isn’t SPF strong enough for that, but it was okay because we needed to go exploring.

We took the metro to Dubai Mall, which is the biggest and fanciest of them all. I think we saw about 50% of the mall, generously, and we were walking around for hours! The malls are especially interesting because there’s a really varied mix of people in them. The Emirati women and men usually wear traditional clothing, which is white tunics, loose pants, and head scarves for the men and black robes and veils for the women. There’s a fair amount of variation in coverage for the women—everything from only their eyes showing to full face and a couple inches of hair. In general, if you’re in a more formal place (which includes this mall but other malls less so) you should wear “respectful dress,” which means you should cover your shoulders to your knees, or some variation on that. You still see tourists and Western expats in tanks and shorts, but the air conditioning is so much that you’ll probably want to wear either a cardigan over that or longer pants anyway.

 
Dubai Mall waterfall
 

The Dubai mall is seriously enormous, and it’s divided up by what’s being sold. There are “districts” for kids stuff, electronics, and shoes, among lots of other thigns. There are also cinemas, department stores, a food court, an aquarium, an indoor theme park, a children’s playland, and an ice skating rink.

 With the aquarium and the shoe district.

Afternoon tea is a big thing dating back to when the British had control of the area, so there are important-looking tea cafes as frequently as we would see coffee shops. There are also a lot of Western chain restaurants throughout Dubai, like T.G.I. Friday’s, the Cheesecake Factory, Tim Horton’s (hey Canadians!), Chili’s, Johnny Rockets, Baskin Robbins, Subway, and of course Starbucks. I loved seeing how they write the brands and names in Arabic in such a way that the font is the same as the Western version.

 

Starbucks, in both languages!

We did our best with the mall, but there’s only so much you can take and so many times you can goggle at what people are willing to spend on hedgehog-spiked shoes. We left the mall for the plaza and esplanade between it and the Burj Kahlifa—the tallest building in the world. At the plaza, there’s a large pool with a fountain and light show synchronized to music that plays every half hour after 6:30pm. We made it just in time for the 7:30 show, and the song was Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you,” which is a personal favorite. The show was great and we had an excellent viewing spot, I was completely overexcited. You really need to go watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssFJhuXTvUE. Right now. I'll wait.

Burj Kahlifa and its plaza!

You can go to the top of the Burj Kahlifa, but it costs 150 Dirham (about $35) per person to do so. Martin had found out that we could go to the bar one floor below the top for free, but with a minimum drink order of 100 Dirham (about $25) per person. He’d gotten us reservations, so we went through about 5 layers of concierges, receptionists, and elevator guards to get to the top. The view was unbelievable. The building is surrounded by other tall buildings, but it’s more like a tree in a grassland than a forest. We could see all of Dubai lit up below us, and if there had been lights on the ocean and in the desert I’m sure we would have seen the curve of the Earth. The bar knows what it’s good for: our table faced right out a window and the walls were nothing but glass. It was very swank, and we decided that the drinks we ordered were the first time we’d had $20 cocktails that seemed to be worth $20.

 

View pictures never come out but we had to try!

We had those two cocktails and split one more while we sat up there for a couple of hours, but we had dinner reservations (I know, wrong order. It’s how the reservations worked out!) at a Thai restaurant at the fountain so we left just in time to catch the 9:30pm fountain show. I had to see it after the first one had been so good.

 

By the fountain and the bridge that led to our restaurant

 

This turned into the fountain every 30 minutes. The building on the far right is the base of the Burj Kahlifa.

The only problem with our plan was that we’d gotten really hungry after walking around so much and taking so long between meals, so we’d finished the nuts and olives that came with our drinks. We totally ruined our appetites! We still wanted to check out the restaurant, because it was supposed to be really cool and because it was right next to the fountain, so we had appetizers and got to watch two more fountain shows while we ate. It was easy to eat slowly, since I got brave and ordered my Thai ceviche appetizer spicy—it most definitely was! The metro stopped running at 11 so we took a taxi home, and made it to bed before 1am because we had a 7am wake-up for our desert dune buggying adventure the next day. The whole evening I didn’t know whether to be happier with what we were already doing or excited for what we were going to do.

Part two to come!

Barcelona: Sunday

Sunday was our last day in Barcelona. We started the day with another run (really really enjoying the dry, snow/ice-free streets), this time up to the Parc de Montjuic, which is an old fortress that was converted to a city park and used as the venue for the Olympics in 1992. We had fantastic views of the city:

 

Water!

 

Sunlight!!

And the Mediterranean:

 

Water!

 

Sunlight!!

Martin particularly enjoyed checking out the weaponry at the old fortress at the top of the hill. 

 

Trust him he's an engineer.

After our (again accidentally awesomely long) run, we headed to Park Guell, the other major Gaudi feature in the city. It was originally intended to be a sort of gated community, but the project was abandoned while it was still a park. It's a fairly big park on a hill, with Gaudi's nature-inspired architecture forming paths, bridges, and terraces.

 

The main entrance.

 

Some of the decorative medallions on the ceiling of the main forum.

 

Sitting on the cool benches around the main terrace.

After our adventure in Park Guell, we took the subway back to the city proper and walked around the Gótica district and grabbed lunch there. We were planning to go to the Picasso museum (which is free after 3pm on Sundays), but there was a really big line. Added to that, the neighborhood where it's located is really cool and needed more exploring, so we decided that was the way to go. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the area, before collecting our bags and heading to the airport. Once we got there, we promptly fell asleep waiting for our plane. When we got back to Zürich, it was still snowing.

Love Katie

Barcelona: Saturday

You guys. I found my favorite church. Well...the interior. But first:

Saturday morning started with a run along the (Mediterranean!) waterfront in Barcelona. It was a beautiful day, sunny even though it was chilly. I don't run with my phone so I didn't take any pictures, but here's one of the waterfront area where we were running:

 

Water! At the time, there were even surfers!

There was a great running path right above the beach, and we saw lots of other runners--even running groups and beach-fitness classes! I'm a huge nerd about that stuff; it always makes me really happy to see active people in a city, it makes it seem more liveable. Plus we had a great longer run unintentionally!

After having breakfast at the market from the day before, we hopped on the subway to go to La Sagrada Familia, the famous unfinished cathedral designed by Gaudi. There was a line to get tickets, but once we got inside it was totally amazing! Gaudi wanted to design the ultimate church, and the result (so far) is incredible. 

 

Here's the outside, which is still under construction. But it's not my favorite part...

The stained glass is used to create colorful light and to convey theological points (Gaudi was really serious about this church). Each of the four sides of the church conveys a different theological point or story, from the celebration/birth of Christ:

 

Up close you can see the statues and detailing in the masonry.  

 

And from further away you get the larger picture. Look at the way the stained glass colors the pillars! I can't get over that!

To His passion and ascension. This picture isn't very good, but you can make out the transition from reds and oranges at the bottom to the white pane at the top, which symbolizes the ascension. On the left and right are green and blue panes, indicating earth and water for very important reasons that I can't quite remember. 

 

Sorry for the picture quality, this is the first one I took and I was busy looking everywhere at once...

As you walk towards the altar end of the church, the panes of stained glass are colored to create changes over the course of the day. It was about 2pm, so the light was coming in from the left of the altar. I absolutely loved the way the light from the glass colored the inside of the church. 

  

This picture is unaltered, which I can't believe. Look how each portico is a different color!

 

This is the one that shows red in the picture above. You can see how, at different times of day, it would show different colors even within the same windows. You can also see the really cool broken-glass effect they used. It's not pictures, it's just color and shape. 

 

Here we're looking at the window behind the altar from the red windows. You can see how the windows color the columns.

 As you walk towards the back of the church, there are areas where the stained glass isn't finished yet. As much as I'm determined to go back when it's finished to see how it turned out, I'm really glad I got to see it now too. The green window on this section is finished, but the windows beyond are just plain glass. 

 

The reflection from the completed window and that of the plain windows.

 

And the windows themselves. Look how cool the geometry of the ceiling is!

 

Straight-on of the green window.

Finally, on the altar end of the church, there are windows left intentionally colorless, but still with the abstract broken-glass shapes. Gaudi didn't want people to be distracted by the glass while they're trying to worship, and also something about purity etc. The glass artist did a really good job making the glass beautiful even without color, and I totally didn't get good pictures of it...

 

Look how pretty!! 

As much as the light was probably my favorite part of the church, Gaudi also paid attention to the acoustics of the church. He used hyperbolas to shape the ceiling, making it so that the church resonates without echoing. That's especially important since the choir loft is designed for 10,000 singers! Plus it looks really cool.

 

See? Awesome!

After the church, we explored the area around it and got lunch (at 4 in the afternoon, we're getting super Spanish), then walked along a major street, shopping a little bit (the shopping there is SO GOOD, have I mentioned?), until we saw two of Gaudi's other famous works: Casa Milá and Casa Batlló. The first one wasn't our favorite, but Casa Batlló was super cool: very colorful and interestingly shaped. It's so cool to see something like that just on a major street!

 

I'm glad they light it up, it was starting to get dark!

On the way home, we saw fliers for a Spanish Guitar concert that started soon, so we ran home, had a quick dinner of bread, olives, and salami while changing clothes, and went to the concert. It was really amazing--one of those things that makes you think, "I should learn to play guitar!" even though I don't really stand a chance of ever getting that good--and it was in a 14th-century church, which added to the cool. After that, we did a little wandering and headed home.

Up next: Sunday!

Love Katie