National Day Celebrations

If I'm being totally honest I don't really know what National Day is celebrating, but it was last week and I loved it.  Basically everyone got super patriotic and plastered the UAE flag all over the city and we got to spend an entire day at school celebrating it with a festival.

Teachers were encouraged to wear traditional clothes, so here is my abaya.

The school festival had music, dancing, food, henna, horse rides, and more.

One of the students brought their pet monkey and no one thought that was weird.

On the weekend I went to a National Day celebration with some friends. It was basically a big party on the beach with an incredible fireworks show after. 

Even my beloved Burj got in on the Nataional Day celebrations.

Abu Dhabi

Dubai is really great but also a little confusing because sometimes they just announce holidays that weren't on my school calendar, but everyone else knew that they existed. A strange thing is that these holidays are really difficult to plan for because we have to wait until they are officially announced by the UAE to make any plans. This makes it difficult to go anywhere when we have last second breaks from school, but we still try to make the most of the breaks. On one of these surprise breaks some friends and I took trip to Abu Dhabi.

Abu Dhabi is the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and it's about an hour drive away from Dubai. Dubai is the bigger city between the two, but Abu Dhabi was an excellent weekend getaway.

Road trip selfies are always a must.

It turns out the UAE looks a lot like Nevada.

lovely hotel

We spent our first day in Abu Dhabi at the pool,

brunching,

and went out dancing that night.

view from the room

The next day we went to tour the Grand Mosque which was my favorite.

I actually took loads of pictures which is something I never think to do, but everything was just so lovely.

After the tour we went to a traditional Emirati restaurant which was so good and I took no pictures. It has rice and meat and if you're really being authentic then you sit on the floor and eat with your hands, but we didn't do that part.  

We ended our Abu Dhabi adventures with a trip to Emirates Palace which is a fancy shmancy hotel. I know I took pictures, but I can't find them, so here are some googled pictures. I'm sure that the ones I took looked just like these. 

It was a lovely visit, definitely worth the trip. 

My Love

Sorry that this post isn't what you thought it would be about because this post is about how much I love a building, and I think there is almost no chance that's what you were thinking.

You guys, I am in love with the Burj Khalifa. I have to comment on it every time I see it to any one that is around, including strangers. It's just so beautiful and sparkly. 

The first time I googled "Dubai" I saw this picture, and it was love at first sight.


My first sighting was the morning after I arrived in Dubai, and it looked a little underwhelming so I was worried I'd been catfished.

But don't worry, then I saw it at night and I now realize it's everything I hoped for, and then some.

I take a picture literally every single time I see it. Don't worry, I'm not uploading all of them.

I wish the pictures could even kind of do it justice. 

 IT LITERALLY SPARKLES.

There is a fountain show like the one in Las Vegas right at the base of the Burj and it's lovely.

I think it's safe to say:

Massive Malls

Dubai is all about going above and beyond, and the malls here are an excellent example of that.  There are SO many malls and they are all so unbelievably huge.

The Mall of Emirates is the closest to where I live, only a couple metro stops away.  I've been there probably 20 times and I still can't even begin to find my way around.

This is the mall with the indoor ski slopes.

Also all of the malls have all of the American food places.

The Dubai Mall is the biggest mall in the world. I haven't even come close to covering all of its ground. It's incredible. 

There is an indoor ice skating rink because of course there is.

So many beautiful fountains and art fixtures.

It even has an aquarium.

Don't worry, I'll keep wandering the malls aimlessly trying to figure them out so by the time one of you comes to visit me I'll be a pro.  

Finding Some Culture

One of the reasons that I chose to move to Dubai is its population, which is 80% expats. This means there are a whole lot of cultures happening here that aren't Emirati which is an incredible experience for a girl who spent her entire life living within in a three hour radius of where she was born. It is interesting though, that the smorgasbord of cultures, mixed with the fact that Dubai is a relatively new city, makes it hard to find a whole lot of real UAE culture in Dubai (unless you count brunching as a culture).

My visit to the Al Fahidi historical neighborhood was a nice change of pace. It's a neighborhood that has been designed to look like old 1900 Dubai. There are adorable shops and souqs and cafes and cool museums scattered around.

open air art shop

This hummus was to die for. I want more of it right now.

Yes, I ate this and yes, it was delicious.

After wandering around this neighborhood for a bit we made our way to the textile souq which was quite the experience. I'm not good at haggling.  Then we took a water taxi over to the gold souq for 1dhs (slightly more than one quarter).  I bought a (fake, I'm sure) Michael Kors bag.  

We were of course the only girls on the water taxi because there are only men in Dubai.

Sorry that there are no pictures of people. I might as well not take pictures and just google some if I'm not going to take pictures of myself.

Burj Al Arab

Dubai is full of fancy places, but one of the fanciest is the Burj Al Arab. I mean look at this thing:

It's built on an artificial island and is the third tallest hotel in the world. (I googled it, you're welcome.) To put its height into perspective you can see a normal sized tall hotel on the right edge of the picture.  The Burj Al Arab is massive. 

You have to be super rich to belong in the Burj Al Arab. One night stay starts around $2,000.  If you're trying to be thrifty and you don't want to stay, you just want to swim in their amazing pool(s), then you can buy a day pass for $500.  

OR if you're super wise like me then you'll buy a groupon for a manicure or pedicure at the salon at the Burj Al Arab and then you're get to go wander around the place for $50.  

The experience was pretty incredible. The manicure was lovely and when we were done we got to go to the top and see out the restaurant windows.  

Exploring the lobby

In the salon

Elevator selfie!

Elevator ride

The view from the top. It was pretty cloudy so we couldn't see much.

Google says this is what it looks like when it's not cloudy and you're a professional photographer: 

Until next time, you lovely building

Brunch

Listen, I've always loved brunch.  There is something amazing about getting to sleep in and still eat delicious food for breakfast and eat so much of it that you're full for the rest of the day. So I expected a Dubai brunch to be good, but in true Dubai fashion, these brunches go above and beyond anything I have ever seen. Brunch in Dubai is truly an iconic experience.

All the brunches have different vibes ranging from the crazy-party-dance-by-your-seat brunch to the relax-chat-indulge brunch. They're all insane though. It's usually on Fridays and it's usually 3-4 hours of all you can eat (and drink if you're into that).  People dress to impress and have a really great time.  I wish I was a millionaire so I could go to brunch every weekend.

Yesterday I went to a Halloween brunch at Atlantis on the Palm.