Dubai Photo Journey – Visit UAE

Heading out on our 4 month trip, we started our adventure with cocktails at SFO airport before our long flight to Dubai. We had a few days in Dubai before setting off to our adventures in Ghana. Dubai was an odd place as I detail in my "Thoughts on Dubai" post, here are just the silly/beautiful photos and some brief stories from our time in Dubai and the very start of our amazing trip!

Preflight cocktails to celebrate our long awaited trip. Nice to have a little time to relax before our almost 16 hour flight to Dubai!

Had to get our smooches in before we get to Dubai where kissing in public is technically illegal.

8 hours in and we were only half way there. We Watched the first godfather movie and debated just plowing through the trilogy, but Alena settled for a snooze and I watched Inside Out. Our flight was so luxurious. Emirates was awesome. The food was delicious, had ample leg room and access to hundreds of free movies and tv shows to watch. I'd highly recommend it, excited our other long flight to Ghana is Emirates as well.

Our first meal in Dubai was a late night snack at our hotel bar. Delicious black shrimp, dyed with squid ink! Chef came out to meet us and gave us a free dessert. Such a nice way to start our stay in Dubai.

We stayed and the JW Marriott Marquis. It was a beautiful hotel.

And we were surprised to find our it was the tallest hotel in the world!(at least as of 2012...)

Alena had never stayed in such a fancy hotel so she just had to jump on the bed!

I think our lack of sleep made us extra goofy!

Our weird travel timing caused us both to wake up at 5am our first morning. We decided to grab some food and catch the early morning to train to the Dubai Marina. It was about a 30 minute trip down the Dubai coast through the city sprawl. The buildings here were so beautiful in the morning light.

UAE (United Arab Emirates) currency bills were beautiful. So colorful and had amazing artwork of historical buildings and native animals.

We finished off our first day in Dubai feeling very tired and hungry so we decided to eat at one of the restaurants in the hotel. We Tong Thai and i am so glad we did. The food was probably the best Thai food I've ever had and the service and ambiance were perfect. I only wish we had been a little more awake to enjoy it fully.

Day 2 in Dubai we again woke up early, but this time to go see the Burj Khalifa (world's tallest building and man made structure!) and the Dubai Mall.

View from the 124 floor sky deck. Takes less than 60 seconds for the elevator to go from the ground floor to the 124th!

So tall the shadow cover whole sky scrapers next door!

That translates to a lot of feet!

There is our tiny hotel!

At the fountains outside the Dubai Mall and the Burj Khalifa there were these awesome teeter-totters! Alena was skeptical at first but was quickly laughing along with my antics.

Everywhere we ate in Dubai the food was fantastic, including the Dubai Mall. There we had some delicious Lebanese food, but the mall had options from all around the world.

Including the (evidently) world famous Raising Canes. The mall also had a 3 story waterfall and an indoor aquarium.

After exploring the mall and window shopping all the fancy jewelers, we had a few hours to kill before our trip to the Arabian desert. Pool time!

Our desert tour started with an hour long drive out of Dubai proper and into the desert. And ended at this super weird tourist trap in the middle of nowhere. Our guide dropped us off with a hundred other tourists and said we had to stay here for 30 min before our tour started so we could rent atvs and buy trinkets while we waited. We were kinda pissed as this was not what we signed up for but we used it as an opportunity to laugh at the insanity of the scenes in front of us and relax in the shade in the desert breeze.

At least they had restrooms, even if they were unlike any I had seen before: a hole in the ground with no TP but a hose to squirt your self clean.

Finally we were off for the real desert, which was gorgeous.

It was a long ride out there but definitely worth seeing!

As Part of our desert "safari" we went 4-wheeling in the Arabian sand dunes. Exhilarating and beautiful. Had to capture this ironic song playing while we "bashed the dunes" as our driver would say.

We saw many camels in the desert as we drove out towards our dinner location. When we arrived to the complex they had a camel you could ride. We did no partake but there were some others who looked like they were having a nice jaunt around the parking area. The camel was way taller than I expected.

We were also treated to a nice BBQ and some very interesting dance performances including a special belly dance, this guy above who literally spun for 5 minutes!!! And a fire dancer/breather. Certainly a wild way to end our time in Dubai.

Will continue with photo journey part 2 for Ghana. 🙂