A long and diverse weekend!

Jack and I arrived back in Abu Dhabi this afternoon after spending the last 4 days doing very different things. Friday morning we took off on the bus for Dubai, destination Ski Dubai. For those of you who don't know what Ski Dubai is, it is a snow skiing "hill" inside the Emirates shopping mall in Dubai. The attraction is that it is 115 degrees outside and 30 degrees inside. We planned to ski for 2 hours and call it a day. We were both a little apprehensive on the first run down the hill as neither of us have been skiing for 22 years. But after the first run it came right back to us. We bought a lift ticket for 2 hours only, knowing we could add an additional hour if we wanted to. Each time you skied through the gate to get on the chairlift it would read your card and tell you how much time you had left. When we were down to 33 minutes and were calculating how many more runs we could get in they took the gates away and quit keeping track of the time. So we skied for 5 more hours until we were so cold and tired we decided to quit. It is certainly not like skiing in Colorado but it was a lot of fun for a day.

We came back to Abu Dhabi Friday night in a shared taxi with 5 other passengers. It was a brand new Hybrid Tahoe, really nice car especially if you'd seen some of the taxi's we have ridden in. And this guy must have loved this car because he drove 100+ mph the whole way to Abu Dhabi. We got here quick and miraculously unharmed!!

Saturday morning we left for Al Ain which is about 2 hrs. east of Abu Dhabi on the border of Oman. We had reservations at a very nice hotel up on Jebel Hafeet mountain. Once we got all the way up to the hotel on Saturday we decided just to stay there for the afternoon and enjoy the pool. While we were at the pool a sand storm blew up and it was like a mild hurricane coming through except the rain was replaced by sand and there was absolutely no warning. Tables flew, unbrellas flew, everyone ran for cover and there was sand everywhere, mostly in our eyes! Quite an experience.

Sunday morning we went to the camel market, not at all what we thought it would be and frankly a little scary! We asked our taxi to wait while we looked around a few minutes and were very glad we did. We would not have wanted to be out there with no immediate way out. They are just very poor, uneducated Camel farmers that don't see too many tourists.

We went from there to the Al Ain Palace Museum which was beautiful and peaceful. We had fun trying on the traditional clothing that they have available for picture taking. After lunch about 2 pm we decided to take a walk through the Al Ain Oasis, a working oasis of date farmers.They each have their own plot of land and are growing Date palms and harvesting the dates. They have a very intricate system of channeling the water and releasing it to irrigate different sections at a time.The oasis was hugh and very, very hot. What were we thinking going at that hour? It would be like going to the zoo in Miami in the middle of the summer. Smart people should know better.

After a quick trip to the air-conditioned Al Ain Museum we went back to our hotel and went for a much needed swim. No sand storm today but it did cloud up and rain for 20 minutes.

Today (Monday) we just stayed at the hotel enjoying the pool and the view again. The hotel is perched up high almost to the top of the 4000ft. mountain. The terrain is all jagged rock with very sparse vegetation. It was also about 10 degrees cooler up here than in Abu Dhabi. Beautiful view when it wasn't too hazy from all the sand in the air.

Now we are back in the villa and Jack is getting some sleep before he goes to work at 1:30 am. What a schedule!!