Driven By Wanderlust: Dubai - May '12 (part 2)

Here you can find the second part (out of 3) of my blog about my trip to Dubai. This time it's day 5-6-7, Dubai-Abu Dhabi - Dubai. The first part can be found here.

Day 5 – Al Mamzar

We set our alarmclock quite early so we could visit the beach in the relatively cool morning (33-38 degrees Celsius). In the neighborhood of our hotel we hailed a taxi which brought us to the entrance of Al Mamzar Beach park in 15-20 mins. An entrance fee of 5 AED (1€) gave us admission to a well maintained park, with 5 beaches, bbq-area's with bbq's that are ready to use and quite a lot of gardens and (palm)trees. We went to beach #3, where we had an open view of the sea (other beaches have a view towards Sharjah or one of Dubai's isles). At the beach we put our towels under one of the cany sunscreens build between the palm trees and headed to the sea. How relaxed this was! A supernice hot sea, really slowly descending seabed and almost no one there! Also nice cold beverages were sold at 10 meters away for only 40 cents, so until it gets too warm, this is a perfect hangout!

At the hottest moment of the day we took a taxi back to our hotel, got some breakfast and took a siesta before trying to find the waterbus that would take us over the creek another time. Yeah, trying, since we couldn't find it. After walking for a while and not finding what we wanted we craved for some airco and walked into a place, ordered 'something to eat, not too spicy' and some drinks. I still have no clue what I ate back then, but the total bill was about 1,5€ and it tasted good. Afterwards we took the metro to Wafi, another overthetop expensive mall with more overthetop expensive shops. This mall had an Egyptian theme, with a souk underneath it, a pyramid-shaped hotel and practically no clue where to find the entrance. One general tip for Dubai as a pedestrian: walk into the carpark, you'll probably find elevators there! The weirdest thing about Wafi however was the fact almost no one was in the mall, I really wonder how a mall like this can exist with virtually no costumers. After Wafi we went back to the hotelroom for a while and ended the night at Ravi's again. When in Dubai: go to Ravi, order a Chicken Tikka and have the best grilled chicken in your life!

Al Mamzar Beach Park

Almost no one on the beach...

...or in the water.

Except for some fishes ;)

Wafi from the outside.

Free, well maintained toilets in Wafi.

Wafi.

Day 6 – Abu Dhabi

We had some plans in the morning, but sleeping and chilling seemed to be a better option and after breakfast and checking out we went to the metrostation for a short trip to the busstation. At the busstation we bought a ticket for the touringcar to Abu Dhabi for about 5€. For the first 30 km of the trip we drove over the 5 laned Sheikh Zayed Road through Dubai and we had some nice views of parts of Dubai we hadn't seen before. After about 1,5 hour in the bus we arrived at Abu Dhabi busstation where we took a cab to our hotel for 1.5€. At first we got a dirty room, but everything was resolved quite soon and we could refresh ourselves at the really nice room. In the room we searched the internet to get some information about the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and it seemed the bus to the mosque had a stop just in front of the hotel, only 1 AED for the trip that lasts for 15 kilometer!

In contrary to the local bus in Dubai, the separate section for women was really used by women and the information in the bus was in Arabic only, but when we saw the gigantic mosque, we hit the stopbutton and got lucky! At the mosque we once again found out the UAE is not made for pedestrians, but calling the local information number gave us the information we needed to get in, just in time for the free 5pm tour. Luckily for me, men with long trousers only needed to remove their shoes whereas women had to wear a traditional robe and headscarf. After an interesting tour with a lot of information about the mosque and the Islam we didn't feel like finding another local bus, so we hailed a cab back to the hotel. 6€ for the 15 kms is still a bargain though! And as usual, we got some Indian food for dinner again, for just over 10€ our table was stacked with the food we ordered and quite some complimentary dishes! You really gotta love those cheap Indian meals! After dinner we checked out the hotelpool, this time we had a really nice indoor pool with a great view of the city. We ended the night with a walk over the Corniche, Abu Dhabi's 8 km long boulevard. At the Corniche we quickly spotted a bike rental service and rented something that looked like a bike, a go-card ánd a motor with sidecar. It was quite the work-out to ride that thing in Abu Dhabi's evening heat, but it was worth it!

Skyscraper galore!

Pretty decent hotel in Abu Dhabi.

Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.

Indian food!

Hotelpool.

Corniche on a bike by night.

Day 7 – Dubai

This morning we took it easy again and at a slow pace we went to the busstation of Abu Dhabi, where we hopped on the touring car again, back to Dubai. Abu Dhabi – Dubai is 2€ cheaper than the opposite direction, so 3€ and a 1,5 hour drive took us to the Al Ghubaiba busstation. At the Al Ghubaiba busstation we grabbed something to eat at the McDonalds, where we were welcomed by a doorkeeper and the whole staff with a loud “Welcome to McDonalds!”. The moment they see you are ready to leave they will take all your trash and clean the table. Great service! After a snack we took the metro to our last hotel, which was a pretty long ride, but for less than a euro we were dropped off almost in front of the hotel.

When we arrived at the hotel we checked in, visited the grocery store to fill the fridge with Fanta Apple and immediately checked the rooftop swimming pool and enjoyed the water and sun! After swimming we got ready for something very different than the usual sun and heat we were confronted with every day: snowboarding! We booked a snowboard lesson at Ski Dubai, 200/300 meters from the hotel, located at the Mall of the Emirates. Unlike the other malls we visited, the Mall of the Emirates is a busy mall, with loud music and shows as advertisement for brands. We found our way to Ski Dubai and dressed up for snowboarding. The lesson itself was more like an attempt to fall off the hill as hard as you could, so once but never again. My career as a snowboarder will be limited to 1 attempt: only in Dubai! After falling for an hour we walked through the mall for a while and ended the night with the first beer of the trip in 'Apres', where we had a nice view on the slopes we 'snowboarded' on a couple of hours ago.

Check the last part here!