I had a good last day in Dubai today. I left the hotel around 8:30am and headed over to Old Dubai to check out some of the souks, and just to see what is on that end of town. Most of my time on this trip has been done between Bur Dubai and the south, so I wanted to make sure I got to see some of the north before I left. The first souk I went into was the…
I got up early this morning and packed my bags at the Sheraton. I took a taxi from the hotel down to the Al Alam Palace in the new part of Muscat. There are a couple of forts down there, which you aren’t allowed to go into, but you can see from the coast. I walked through the area and took a look at the nice buildings down there, but couldn’t go into any of them. I walked back toward…
Today was a great day of exploration! Danny met me at the hotel this morning and we had a car brought to us there. The company (NAB) brought the car, went over the details with us, and then we went on our way south. We hadn’t had breakfast yet so Danny found a small Coffee Shop (that was the actual name of the place) that was great! It was a small cafe kind of place on the side of the…
Today was a busy day! I got up at 4:30am, quick shower, taxi from the hotel to the Dubai Mall (Fashion Avenue entrance) to get in the queue for the Burj Khalifa at sunrise. I got there around 5:20am and there were already at least 100 people in the queue, but once they started letting us in at 5:30am, it moved pretty quickly. It was just so strange that the entrance to this is inside the mall, which is, of…
Today was a very chilled day, and I liked it. I woke up a little later this morning. Went through my pictures from the first few days to pick some for the blog. Then I decided to go back to the Dubai Mall for lunch. I figured it would be good to get back and have a better look at the Burj Khalifa since I’m going to be at the top of it tomorrow morning for sunrise. Also, there are…
Today was a good day on a tour to Abu Dhabi. Not great, but good. My driver picked me up at 8:30am and there was one other tourist in the van. She was a 40-something Swiss woman traveling by herself and apparently didn’t want to chat. She was sat in the front seat and had headphones on the whole time. We then picked up a Chinese mother and son (I think), who didn’t speak any English, and lastly picked up…
Today was another very busy day, but it was great! It started out with an early morning taxi ride over to the Dubai Frame. I didn’t realize that 9am was when it opened, but it worked out great, I got to be the first person inside. There was a small museum at the bottom about the structure, then a glass elevator 45 floors up to the top of the frame. I was greeted by people working there every 10 feet,…
I had an excellent first day in Dubai! I took the overnight flight on Emirates from Edinburgh last night, and the first good thing that happened on this trip was on the plane. I was watching the Patriots vs Bills game on my phone in the airport before I boarded, but only got to see the first half, so figured I would have to catch the rest in Dubai after I landed. Well, the in-seat entertainment systems had six live…
St. Petersburg, Russia, Asia Today was a great day of sightseeing! The started out with breakfast at Zoom Cafe with the aussies (Ben and Sam). We were trying to catch the train at 11:07am to Peterhof, but we showed up at the train station to find out that the schedule online is wrong and the next train was actually leaving at 1pm. We checked out the busses and there was one leaving in about two minutes going to Peterhof so…
St. Petersburg, Russia, Asia Today was much less eventful than yesterday, but a nice relaxing day nonetheless. I had to hang around the hostel for a couple hours this morning to do my laundry, and then headed out around noon. I got to cross off another place from my Top 100 list, so that was cool. The Hermitage Museum was the 62nd place I’ve seen so far. This one definitely did not disappoint. I usually am not a huge fan…