Erik, Marlowe, Yvette and Noakai in Battery Park City near the Freedom Tower and Wall Street
Noakai attends Battery Park City School, a short walk from their apartment
Our tour guide, Mounir
Burj Khalif is the tallest building in the world
The view from the 124th floor of the Burj Khalif
Desert Safari wild crazy ride over sand dunes
This is so much fun!
Desert safari camel ride
belly dancer
Camels for sale at the market
Gina took us to lunch at the Marina beach mall
The Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi
Our Dubai tour group
Parade!
Brrrr… it is cold waiting for the parade to start!
Snoopy!
Thanksgiving lunch with Yvette and Marlowe
Grandpa Felix and Grandma Gina and some cousins in Brooklyn.
Presenting the latest episode of
“Hawaiians in Dubai”
starring: Lari and Debi
November 14 to 28, 2014
On Facebook, I noticed that one of my friends lived in Dubai and I thought perhaps it would be interesting to go there. Then I saw a discounted Gate1 tour on Travelzoo to Dubai and decided that I would go. I asked 3 people before my friend Debi said yes, she would go with me. Meantime, my daughter Yvette and her family decided to move to NY City from Durham, NC, where they lived for 8 years. So I visited them before my trip to Dubai and everything worked out fine. I went to their apartment in Battery Park City, next to the freedom tower a few days ahead of Debi, and helped Yvette organize and settle into their new apartment. When Debi arrived, we stayed in an Airbnb in Brooklyn and flew out the next day to Dubai.
Dubai is one of 7 emirates in the United Arab Emirates. Our tour group consisted of 19 of us, and our guide, Mounir was very knowledgeable and organized. We had a city tour of Dubai the first day and as we drove around the city, we couldn’t help but admire the amazing modern architecture of the city. We went to the giant aquarium at the Atlantis Hotel on Palm Island and then to the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalif 124 stories high with a view of the city. We went to the Souk, a marketplace, where we could shop and bargain for jewelry, spices and more.
The next day we had a free morning, so my friend Gina who lives there, picked us up and took us sightseeing to the Marina area, where we had lunch. In the afternoon, we had a special desert safari tour that took us over sand dunes in Toyota Land Cruisers on a rough and crazy ride. We arrived at the camp where we rode a camel, watched the falcons who are trained to hunt, and had a delicious buffet dinner seated around a large stage. Two dancers performed, a man who could spin around for a long time and a belly dancer. After we got back to town, we asked our driver to drop us off at the Dubai Mall where we could watch the dancing waters show, like the Bellagio hotel in Vegas.
On Sunday, our tour took us east into the desert to the oasis city Al Ain. We saw the Sheik museum, Sheik palace, a date farm and a camel farm. The next day, we went to the emirate of Sharja, just north of Dubai, where we learned about the Islamic culture and religion at the museum and shopped at the Blue Souk. Then we went to the hotel to pick up our luggage for our drive to the emirate of Abu Dhabi where we stayed for 2 nights. The next day, we toured the city of Abu Dhabi, where we saw the magnificent Grand Mosque built in 2007. We also visited Sheik Zayed museum and Heritage Village. It was fun making friends with the people in our tour group.
Back in New York after a 15-hour flight, we rested and woke up early on Thanksgiving Day to catch the subway from our BnB to Central Park West to watch the Macy’s parade. It was very cold, so after a half hour, we left to eat breakfast, then to Yvette’s place to have Thanksgiving lunch with them. That night, I visited my adoptive Puerto Rican family at Grandma Gina’s for Thanksgiving dinner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn where Yvette lived 10 years ago.
My 6 trip favorites:
-Riding 124 stories to the top of the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalif.
-Seeing the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade in person for the first time, in the cold and with crowds of people from all over
-Visiting with my friend Gina in Dubai
-Visiting my daughter, Yvette and her family in Battery Park City in Manhattan
-Learning about the Islamic religion and life style was so interesting
-The desert safari wild sand dune ride was the highlight of my trip to Dubai
lariyasui 