Dubai Doings

Just after the aircon went on!
It's been good to have escaped the flooding in England but I think where I'm heading back to on Friday is not out of the woods yet. The bad weather looks likely to continue and I'll no doubt be hankering for some sun very quickly. I won't be missing the heat here though - yesterday the car temperature gauge showed 48 degrees. The hot air was blowing in straight off the desert and it was unbearable.

Blake was here for three days and bought Barney with him. There was an All Black game on while he was here and we managed to get a sightseeing trip in to see the major sights of Dubai. The Burj Dubai became the tallest building in the world on Saturday when it overtook Tower 101 in Taipei. I didn't go up 101 and I won't be tempted with the Burj eventually either. We took the Pajero out on the beach and tried the water - too hot to swim comfortably - so we enjoyed the beach from the comfort of the air-con car. The Burj is in the hazy distance.

We had dinner out one night at a very fancy (and nearly deserted) Polo Club, complete with pristine polo greens, and had a really good meal for a good price. Another night we ate out at Madinat, an upmarket complex on the coast not far from here which has shops and lots of restaurants and hotels.

Blake managed to do some biking and running and also spent a couple of hours skiing in the Mall, which he said was good for an indoor slope. He headed off to Switzerland then Korea and we retreated to our normal routine for the last few days before most of us head to London. Bec and Daisy are spending two and a half weeks with friends, escaping the heat, then being joined by Andy for a few days. Great excitement today when Daisy had her first haircut. Bec had hers done first in a hotel salon in Mall of the Emirates while I took Daisy out to lunch. It really wasn't as bad as it looks.

The salon was very nice, all white, stylists decked out in white, very posh and Daisy fronted up for her trim and was amazingly compliant. I think she liked being the centre of two stylists' attention (particularly when one looked like Orlando Bloom) and she knew just how to behave. She had a fringe cut as she won't keep a clip in and her hair is always down over her eyes.

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My virus is slowly clearing up. Should be fine by the time I leave.