Visitors in Abu Dhabi!

Yippee, this holiday marks the arrival of our first non-related visitors to see us in the UAE.  Dear friend, Amy from Charlotte and her husband Peter joined us the day after Christmas for a week's stay.  We kept them pretty busy and I hope they enjoyed their stay here in Villa Puryear in the capital city of the UAE.  After soliciting feedback from my parents and brother (who visited the same time last year), I adjusted their itinerary a bit but it was still quite similar to what we did last year when my family visited - you can read about that visit in the Jan '11 post)

They flew in late on the 26th and we drug them out of bed rather early on the 27th to hit the road for the desert.  We took them to our favorite UAE location - deep in the Empty Quarter of the desert near the Saudi Arabian border.  The hotel (Qasr al Sarab) is about a 2 1//2 hour drive from here and is located on truly stunning giant orange-colored sand dunes.  We swam, relaxed and hiked up the dunes a few times.  We saw tons of camels on our drive and a few at the hotel.  Amy, Peter, Regan and I tested our abilities with a bow and arrow.  Fun adventure all around.  Our family got very lucky and ended up with a complementary upgrade to a villa with our own private pool - the kids loved it and Jake and I enjoyed lounging on the outdoor covered cabana to watch them.  We loved our villa so much that we couldn't bear to leave it for dinner and just ordered room service there.  Unfortunately it's a mighty expensive hotel so we just splurged on one night (I *keep* saying that we're going to take advantage of one of their stay-longer deals when it's not the peak season but we just haven't pulled it off yet).

After two days out in the desert we came back to Abu Dhabi.  Amy and Peter went on the mosque tour (Amy looked great in an abaya and shayla).  We went back to a (closer) desert that night for a desert safari.  Dune bashing is such a fun, fun activity (it's also a bit palm-sweating and nail-biting as we slide down really steep sand dunes with sand a-flying).  Amy, Peter and the three big kids and I did it (Jake stayed home with Anna who is probably a little young for the 'roller coaster on the sand.'  Regan and Meredith loved it.  Jane really liked it at first but about 80% of the way through, she decided she had enough and got a little scared at that point.  But big smiles and squeals all around.

Post-dune bashing was camel riding, dune hiking and an outdoor middle eastern bbq before some traditional Emirati dancing (by the men) and a belly-dancer.  Amy and the girls got some henna painting done on their feet.

The next day centered around tennis.  We were fortunate enough to have been offered two very special tickets to the Mubadala Tennis Championship where Djokovic, Nadal, Federer & someone else(?) were the headlining players.  What made these tickets so special (in addition to their location right behind the officials) was that they included a tennis lesson with Djokovic.  Amy is a big tennis player so we sent Jake and Amy to enjoy the lesson.  There were about 20 people in the lesson (and Jake and Amy said that almost all of them were *really* good as many had won this lesson through tennis tournaments, etc.).  Djokovic was a lot of fun - cracking jokes and being engaged in the lesson.  Amy was thrilled to be able to say that she scored two points on Djokovic by going over his head but still keeping the ball in (she humbly prefaced it by saying that he probably didn't give it his all as he was likely saving his energy for the match but I say she still scored two points on the number one player in the world - go, Amy!!).  Amy, Peter and Jake stayed for the two matches later that day and enjoyed being very close to the action (although they were close enough that they laughed about their "tennis head" going back and forth, back and forth following the ball).

Saturday we spent out at Saadiyat Island showing them a little of the art scene here in Abu Dhabi, getting giant photo booth pictures taken of our girls, having a nice outdoor lunch (withe camel burger!) and checking out some show villas for sale on the island.  The girls loved looking at these giant villas and have decided that the largest one (oh, probably 10K square feet) would be just the right size for our family.  Sigh....

Saturday night we headed out to the Volvo Ocean Race (a big sailboat race that makes a rather unusual stop in Abu Dhabi - they loaded the sailboats onto a container ship as they decided that the route up past Somalia and Oman was too risky).  A temporary outdoor stag has been set up with nice views across the water to the skyline of Abu Dhabi and we rang in the new year with one of Jake's favorite bands, Coldplay.  A very good concert - I especially liked it because it had some "old-people" seats where I could actually sit down for most of the concert (lame, I know, but seriously, I don't like standing up the whole time!).

The next day had us all off to Dubai where we all went to the top of the tallest building in the world, the Burj al Khalifa (it used to be the Burj al Dubai but they changed the name to the Abu Dhabi leader when Abu Dhabi bailed out Dubai of its big debt mess).  It was interesting to learn some of the factoids about this tall building (like the rebar reached end-to-end would reach a quarter around the world) and it was fun to see the birds-eye view of Dubai (city and sand and water) and the pace of building and development with some older historic photos as well.  It was fun to do once but we won't need to do it again.

We had signed up the big kids for ski lessons at Ski Dubai but we really packed our schedule a bit too tightly and only got there 12 minutes before the lesson.  After deciding that hustling our tired kids very, very quickly into ski gear and pushing them out the door to join the lesson late probably wasn't the best introduction to skiing, we reluctantly decided to bail and try again another time when that is the first thing on our agenda.  We watched the skiiers, sledders and riders of a giant inflated ball and the kids got excited watching it and want to go back sometime.

At this point, we said a temporary farewell to our guests - they continued to enjoy the sights of Dubai (including a really wonderful experience at the Sheikh Muhammad Center for Cultural Understanding breakfast the following day - a must-do for visitors!).  They did some more sightseeing (cultural breakfast, rode the metro, textile souk, monorail to Atlantis and more) and spent the night in Dubai while we picked up some much needed new shoes for Anna, had an early dinner and headed back to Abu Dhabi.  Amy and Peter came back the next day in time for a grown-up farewell dinner in the leany-est building in the world (we got a tour of the building and it was a very fascinating (if a bit scary) design.  The food was just okay and the service was a bit "off" in a way that you would expect with new employees with a limited grasp of English and limited nice hotel/ restaurant experience.  It was still a unique closing to our time with Amy and Peter.  I took them off the airport for their 1 a.m. flight and off they went on their roughly 24-journey back to Charlotte and their five waiting children.

Happy New Year and thanks for coming to visit, Amy and Peter!

Dune climbing!

Kids enjoying our private plunge pool after a free upgrade (yippee!)

Regan getting fitted with her archery equipment

Regan was very confident of her archery skills.  The trainer
tried to move her target closer since she was little but she
told him to leave it where it was and that she would have
no problem hitting it.  She was right!

Amy getting her stance ready

Peter was shockingly good.

Amy says all the coaching tips were squashing her natural talent!

I feel like Katnis in Hunger Games!

Pretty good but no way could I hit a moving target!

Regan was right - she was an excellent shot.  Although the instructor
may say this to all the kids, he told Regan that she was the best shot
of any of the kids he had taught.  Regan must be our future Katnis
(from Hunger Games) since it wasn't Amy or me!

Getting ready to go dune bashing and enjoying the camel farm (they are big,
snarly and a bit grumpy!)

A week old camel

Dune bashing

Smiles all around during our dune bashing break

Pretty sunset in the desert

Dune hiking

Peter and Amy on a camel

Regan and me on a camel

This is the worst part of the ride when the camel puts his two
front feet down and you feel you are about to catapult over its head!

Henna

Giant photo booth pictures!

Camel burger (we also had them try camel milk at our house)

Art exhibit at Saadiyat Island

Happy New Year at Coldplay concert

Bad picture of Coldplay concert 

The fireworks at concert were much prettier than this picture would indicate!

View of Burj al Khalifa as we are entering the "At the Top" experience

The Puryear family "at the top"

Peter and Amy up on high

Regan is scared of heights but she managed this edge okay.  You can
see the now-pretty-much defunct "world" island development off the coast

Amy and Jake made a paper here - you have to look really hard for them
but they indeed did a tennis class with Djokovic.

Thanks for coming all this way, Amy!  I had a great time and hope
you and Peter did, too.  Also, can you believe the only picture
we took together was at the airport as I was dropping them off???  Terrible.