view from the balcony

Dubai is every bit as amazing as you can imagine. Everything is huge, shiny, very new and exceptionally clean and tidy. The whole city looks like an architect's model on a huge scale. Some of the older places have beautiful bougainvillea and palm trees but most buildings are very new with fledgling gardens. The roads are wide with several lanes, complicated flyovers and merging lanes and what can best be described as erratic driving. (Not us, of course!)

                                           Gail and Craig

We visited the Mall of the Emirates, a very opulent, expensive shopping centre with more designer shops than I have ever seen in one place, and a strikingly cosmopolitan clientele.

Attached to this is Ski Dubai,a snow dome in the middle of the desert. We had a table for lunch overlooking the ski slopes and could watch all the activity around us. 

Apart from two ski slopes, with skiers and snowboarders of all abilities, there is a nursery slope (full of small children) luge run, tyre sleighs, toboggan run and a piste with huge snowballs to climb inside and travel down the slope as if inside a tumble drier (I don't know why!) The temperature inside is -2 degrees, and everyone was wearing ski suits.

After lunch we drove to the beach where I paddled in the Persian Gulf (actually quite cold) and walked along to the Burj al Arab hotel (not quite as luxurious as I thought). Visibility was very poor due to a sandstorm.

The biggest surprise of the day though was reserved for last when we visited Gail's school.(Repton) It is truly amazing, absolutely massive and with extraordinary facilities. (Pre prep have their own swimming pool and staff have laptop stations where they can work, as well as a staff room which would put some top hotels to shame.) There is a twelve class intake with over 2000 pupils (day and boarding) in the school.

Repton School, Dubai