Philly, Paris, Dubai, Muscat.
Finally made it last night to what will be home for the next 8 weeks. It was so nice to walk into the apartment and see my friend and housemate Alison, instead of an empty apartment. I haven't yet had much of a chance to get out and explore much, since last night I arrived, today I slept through most of the day (jet lag, travel exhaustion, I guess), and will venture out in few minutes to check out the neighborhood/local grocery store (Walmart)...
In the meantime, I suppose I ought to recount the last few days.
I left Philly on Wednesday evening, EST, and arrived in Paris in the morning (Paris time). After searching unsuccessfully for a water fountain and being unwilling to pay the equivalent of 7 USD for a half-liter bottle of water, I ended up chilling in the airport for about 4 hours, just reading and doing some drawings. I sketched a random guy who was passed out in the waiting area, except he ruined it by shifting his position. Sometimes I wish I could just tell someone not to move, but then that would ruin the whole drawing/photo. Paris, or at least the Charles Du Gaulle airport, is quite charming. The "toilettes" have pink seats, at least in the ladies' room, and I hear English, French, and Spanish sporadically over the intercom. French really is a cute language - I guess I've always had a thing against it after my brother tore it to pieces when I was an impressionable 8-year-old who agreed with everything her big brother said. In any case, I'd definitely like to explore France in the future, and learn to speak the pretty language as well, in the meantime.
A 7-hour-flight later, I landed in Dubai, where I was picked up by my sister and her visiting friend, C (we're going with initials for the most part, to simplify things.) It was so nice to see my sister again - she's been in Dubai for an internship, so we hadn't seen each other in about a month. Considering we're best friends and sisters, that's a pretty long time, I guess. So we arrived at her flat, I put down my suitcases, and she announced that we were going out in half an hour. So... I scrounged around for a semi-appropriate top, changed, and went out with her, C, and two other friends of my sister, A and M. It was a pretty fun time, checking out the clubs in Dubai. So many expatriates! After a year of eating clubs, to say that the club scene in Dubai is different would be quite an understatement. My only complaint would be that my eardrums were actually hurting by the time we left one of the clubs. For those of you who know me and my small hearing problem, that's a bad sign. Hopefully there was not too much damage though. After getting back to my sister's place, I crashed - didn't wake up til my sister woke me up around noon. Instead of venturing out for one of Dubai's famous Friday brunches (read here for my sister's experience), since C was still kind of sick, and I had a flight to catch in the evening, we went instead to Basta Art Cafe in Bur Dubai, which was a really cute little place with cool paintings and quite delicious sandwiches. C has some cool pics, I figured I'd let him be the paparazzi tourist. We wandered around various souqs and eventually wound up at the Mall of Dubai, where Sephora had some promotional show going on and people were hitting up the ski slope (yeah, a man-made ski slop in Dubai... say what??)... finally boarded the plane around 10 PM in DXB and landed in Muscat 45 minutes later...
Here are a few pictures, all from Dubai:
Night view of the city from the car:
My pretty sister (:
View from my sister's flat
Water taxis
Gold Souq - where all the shops only sell gold.
Finally made it last night to what will be home for the next 8 weeks. It was so nice to walk into the apartment and see my friend and housemate Alison, instead of an empty apartment. I haven't yet had much of a chance to get out and explore much, since last night I arrived, today I slept through most of the day (jet lag, travel exhaustion, I guess), and will venture out in few minutes to check out the neighborhood/local grocery store (Walmart)...
In the meantime, I suppose I ought to recount the last few days.
I left Philly on Wednesday evening, EST, and arrived in Paris in the morning (Paris time). After searching unsuccessfully for a water fountain and being unwilling to pay the equivalent of 7 USD for a half-liter bottle of water, I ended up chilling in the airport for about 4 hours, just reading and doing some drawings. I sketched a random guy who was passed out in the waiting area, except he ruined it by shifting his position. Sometimes I wish I could just tell someone not to move, but then that would ruin the whole drawing/photo. Paris, or at least the Charles Du Gaulle airport, is quite charming. The "toilettes" have pink seats, at least in the ladies' room, and I hear English, French, and Spanish sporadically over the intercom. French really is a cute language - I guess I've always had a thing against it after my brother tore it to pieces when I was an impressionable 8-year-old who agreed with everything her big brother said. In any case, I'd definitely like to explore France in the future, and learn to speak the pretty language as well, in the meantime.
A 7-hour-flight later, I landed in Dubai, where I was picked up by my sister and her visiting friend, C (we're going with initials for the most part, to simplify things.) It was so nice to see my sister again - she's been in Dubai for an internship, so we hadn't seen each other in about a month. Considering we're best friends and sisters, that's a pretty long time, I guess. So we arrived at her flat, I put down my suitcases, and she announced that we were going out in half an hour. So... I scrounged around for a semi-appropriate top, changed, and went out with her, C, and two other friends of my sister, A and M. It was a pretty fun time, checking out the clubs in Dubai. So many expatriates! After a year of eating clubs, to say that the club scene in Dubai is different would be quite an understatement. My only complaint would be that my eardrums were actually hurting by the time we left one of the clubs. For those of you who know me and my small hearing problem, that's a bad sign. Hopefully there was not too much damage though. After getting back to my sister's place, I crashed - didn't wake up til my sister woke me up around noon. Instead of venturing out for one of Dubai's famous Friday brunches (read here for my sister's experience), since C was still kind of sick, and I had a flight to catch in the evening, we went instead to Basta Art Cafe in Bur Dubai, which was a really cute little place with cool paintings and quite delicious sandwiches. C has some cool pics, I figured I'd let him be the paparazzi tourist. We wandered around various souqs and eventually wound up at the Mall of Dubai, where Sephora had some promotional show going on and people were hitting up the ski slope (yeah, a man-made ski slop in Dubai... say what??)... finally boarded the plane around 10 PM in DXB and landed in Muscat 45 minutes later...
Here are a few pictures, all from Dubai:
Night view of the city from the car:
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