*Whew* it was a big weekend for us. Accustomed as we are becoming to the relatively small-town life in Muscat, a trip to Dubai last weekend was a nice little break. The itinerary didn’t change much from the last trip: the pool, malls, big buildings. We did, however, manage to work some culture into this trip, which was as nice as it was unexpected.
Thursday morning we woke up early (and actually used an alarm!) despite the usual claims throughout the week of how much we were going to sleep in on the weekend. Some things just don’t change. The thing was, we wanted to do a tour of a mosque, and they only offer a few a week, so there you have it. We joined an information session at the Jumeirah Mosque in Dubai that was put on by the Sheikh Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding. The event was an open forum-type format, where you were allowed to ask anything you wanted about Islam, muslims, arabs, mosques, etc. We took some pictures:
We learned all sorts of interesting things, such as why they have the domes on the buildings (acoustics), what the call to prayer says (basically, “God is great, come pray now”), and how they pray (there are quite a few steps). Overall, it was a very interesting experience and kudos to the Emiratis for striving to increase cultural understanding, which is something we could all use a little more of.
After all that culture, we sought out the 2nd most prominent cultural experience in Dubai: the mall. My stated goal was to witness the famous indoor ski resort. I can now check that off as visited, and I have the evidence:
Coming from Colorado, I just couldn’t bring myself to pay $150 to ski a couple hundred vertical feet on artificial snow. I really wanted to, but I couldn’t. So instead we took it all in from a restaurant overlooking the hill and enjoyed this instead:
They make some pretty tasty hummous, tabouleh, and pita in this part of the world. The lunch-time entertainment included seeing people who had never seen snow before learn how to ski, and watching men in traditional dress (with a puffy jacket over it) and women in abayas (the local version of a burka) sled and tube down the slope. They looked like they were having a blast and the juxtaposition of gulf attire on a ski slope was priceless.
Lastly… for anyone who may actually still read this, you can now look forward to a higher class of photography in upcoming posts. Bree is becoming the official family photographer with a snazzy new digital SLR. Here’s a picture of her taking pictures:
She has always been a really talented photographer so the other person or two who actually reads this is in for a treat.
The weekend o’ fun was capped by a trip to duty free where we were allowed to get 2 bottles of liquor or wine… per person! We split our purchase into two bottles of wine and the essentials for margaritas (tequila + Cointreau). We made our decision and I stand by it. The purchase and ensuing consumption of 4 bottles of booze has already improved our opinion of this place. We may start making regular trips for no other reason than access to purchasing wine. Seriously.
Cheers,
Brian
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