DUBAI

Dubai is a lot like Las Vegas, without the public drunkenness. The airport is very chrome and shiny, sparkly pillars, fake palm trees, and lots of THINGS TO BUY. The terminals are deserted when we walk through, even though it is early evening. The men at the airport all wear floor length white cotton tunics, and the women wear floor length black flowy dresses. Outside is hot and humid and smells of rotting trash.

At the hotel, we all turn in our passports (with much trepidation), get our hotel keys, disperse to our rooms, and spend fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to turn the lights. Bria, Sean and I walked down the block to an Indian restaurant and had a delicious 10pm meal. We shared everything and were the loudest people in the restaurant by at least 50 decibels. Sleeping in our tiny single beds (2 inches apart) in the heavily air-conditioned room was LOVELY, even if only for five hours.

What else could our Dubai hotel boast of? Arabic lounge music streaming in the bathroom, a bidet, and a service shaft (took a picture of course), a night club (closed due to Ramadan?) a rooftop pool, and three wake-up calls for the price of zero! Julie and I set two different alarms, but the several wake-up calls that we didn't order roused us from our sleep an hour before planned and so we were the first people down to the lobby.

And then we gorged on breakfast! This was the nicest hotel breakfast spread I've ever seen. European style cheeses and cold cuts, hot sausages and eggs, potato pancakes, pancakes and french toast and croissant and cakes and all other manners of breakfast starch, yogurts, fresh fruit, steamed fig (yum!!!), several types of fruit juices (and not that American sugary fake fruit crap either), dry cereals and granola, and strong coffee. We had to eat quickly to make our airport shuttle, but no worries! They would probably feed us breakfast on the plane, too.

The bathroom in Dubai airport has heated toilet water. Not heated toilet seats, but toilet bowl water. And it wasn't just heated, it was STEAMING. Not welcoming. There was also a bidet spray nozzle hanging on the wall.

Dubai from the air is a tiny circle of steel surrounded by miles and miles of flat, sandy desert. Sand, sand, sand, sand, sand. There are mountains rising out of the sand as we go south over the Arabian peninsula, but it is so hazy and dusty that nothing looks pretty. I get thirsty just looking out the window.