Exploring Dubai & UAE

This morning my friend collected me from the hotel and drove me to her apartment. She has been living here for about 4 years. Like most ex-pats their apartment is in a multi-story apartment building and she lives on the 29^th floor of a 57 floor building. The view is amazing, you look over the Arabian Gulf (yes, it is not called the Persian Gulf here!). You can see the main road that runs through Dubai and the new train line. The buildings you can see are varied some new and some old. Just below the apartment you could see many smaller homes that would have been built some years ago – they were in a style of what I would call typical ‘middle eastern homes’ and I suspect all faced east.

After spending a lazy day catching up news etc and having another really good sleep the following day we travelled for about one hour to another emirate.

We travelled to ‘Raf Al Kaimah’ – the drive took us through a lot of desert and the sand drifts seem to go on and on. Saw several groups of wild camels and goats.

This emirate is very different to Dubai and is probably what Dubai was 20 or so years ago. My friend’s husband plays golf here most weekends and the golf course is as you would expect here in UAE – very green, lovely gardens, trees and a very nice clubhouse where they make good coffee!

My friend often brings guests to ‘Raf Al Kaimah’ and has got to know a man who owns among other things a guest house and a date farm. The guest house is called ‘Al Dayah’ and we were able to wander around and have a look at the building and the swimming pool. After that we took a walk through the date farm. The farm is very large but there are no dates on the trees this time of the year. The trees were very dusty probably due to the recent sand storm.

The date farm is located in the foothills of the mountains and the mountains were very barren with little vegetation, they seemed to be made up of large boulders all held together with a clay type dusty soil.

There is an amazing hotel that has been built in the middle of nowhere called the ‘Khat Springs Resort’. The resort, despite its unusual location is apparently popular for locals to have weekends away as the facilities are very good. We then went to one of the new and more western-type resorts called ‘Rotana Cove’. This was amazing and would be a great place for a holiday. It is a hotel plus several villas. Many of the villas have been purchased and used as holiday homes by wealthy locals. The location is wonderful the beach front is on the Arabian Gulf and you could see people enjoying the beach lazing on dozens deckchairs under beach umbrellas.

On the way back to Dubai we called into a shopping centre ‘Al Hamra’ and had coffee at an place called ‘Shakespeares’ these are probably owed and run by Indians as the decor is amazing and worth going there just to look at that incredible decor (and yes, the coffee is good too). There are several of these shops located throughout the UAE.

A wonderful day spent with friends – looking forward to another good night’s sleep.

Rotana Cove Resort

Khat Springs Resort !