dubai

my apologies that these entries are out of order. i don't think it's too hard to follow tho, you're as smart at that.

we go back to dubai now. as i said it was 31 degrees when we arrived at 4am. this is a telling factor for our stay.
we broke our trip to kiev in dubai for two reasons. one: doing the whole thing in one go seemed too much of a nightmare and two: we haven't been to dubai before.
not that we experienced a lot of it anyways. dubai is for adults, particularly those unencumbered with infants. then again i think most of the world is for adults unencumbered with infants and children. but that's a musing for another day.

from dubai airport to our hotel, the crown plaza, a taxi ride of approximately 15 minutes did the trick. we had intended to stay at the intercon as i am a priority club member. however despite the website stating the dubai intercon was to be completed in may 2007, it wasn't. their advice was to contact their affliated hotel- the crown plaza. if we'd put more thought and research into we probably wouldn't have stayed there. not that there's anything wrong with the hotel, it just isn't near anything. any of the hotels lining the waterway known as 'dubai creek' or near the seashore would have made more sense. these places are walking distance to the attractions such as the creek itself, the gold souk (market), the spice souk, the larger shopping malls, the beach and what i'm sure would have turned out to be a tourist trap much like darling harbour; the heritage village.
as it was we needed a taxi ride to get anywhere. which again is not really an issue we were just tired and jet lagged and couldn't be arsed.
we did take a taxi to the burj al arab hotel. woops! this is the fancy-dancy hotel you see featured on the travel shows that apparently has a 7 star rating. as we were turning into the single road access to the hotel our taxi driver asked us for our "ticket." what bloody ticket?! apparently you are not permitted access to the hotel unless you have a reservation for a room or at one of the restuarants. you will then be issued with a ticket that you must present to the armed guys at the gate. how the issued ticket gets to you i don't know. obviously the restaurants don't rely on passing trade either.
once we understood this little arrangement we informed our driver, who had pulled over in a lay by that i'm sure is there just for this purpose, that we possessed no ticket and please drive on. oh well. i really did want to see the inside of this hotel, just for a sticky-beak. we had considered staying just one night but the cheapest room available then was around $A900, and while i suppose we could have gasped at the expense and promised to eat nothing but two minute noodles for the next 5 years, the opportunity cost was too great. so we admired the architecture from a distance and said "next time..."

oh dear, percy has just woken screaming. we'll have to do this in installments.