Dubai - Travel, Old Dubai and Mall

After our weekend in Indianapolis, we had half a day at home to do laundry and pack for our Thanksgiving trip to meet John in Dubai.  It's been a family vacation bucket list destination of ours for several years but the school calendar and his trade show calendar had not aligned until this year.  Since he was going to be working all week including Thanksgiving Day, William and I traveled spent the first two days of our trip redoing the sites I had done in July 2023 on my India layover.   Those are first time visitor highlights that he needed to see, and I was comfortable navigating us through them, so it worked out really well.

First up was our 13.5 hour flight from Chicago to Doha.   We chose to fly Qatar Airways versus Emirates as I'd heard such good things from my co-workers about the Qatar Q-Suites business class seats and that service was very good.   It helped that the tickets were about 2/3 the cost of Emirates, as well, since I had to buy two.   Teen Traveler was appropriately impressed with his first foray into business class after being almost exclusively on Southwest flights his entire life.   I did make sure he knew where to stash his things so he wouldn't lose them in the dark and how to order his meals, but otherwise didn't see much of him over the course of the evening except to insist on a matching pajama photo.   When we landed in Doha with the time change, it was a full day gone and now Wednesday evening.   

 

We collected our bags and took an Uber to the Marriott Al Jaddaf where we ordered room service for dinner, had showers and put on new pajamas for real sleeping.   Our first adventure for Thanksgiving was a guided walking tour of "Old Dubai" that included heritage houses, coffee service, a dhow boat ride across the creek to head through the spice and gold souks. 

Spices, not gold, were on my shopping list.   The place I got it looked like a candy shop at the mall with a wall of bins with scoops in it.  I had researched a few items in advance but mostly wanted cumin, which John puts in everything.   We also got ras el hanout which is a Moroccan spice blend.   Two salesman purchases we have enjoyed were menthol crystals to dissolve in water.  Vicks Vaporub in crystal/vapor form.  That could have easily been an Amazon.com purchase.  The second, created in Dubai, and made famous on Tik Tok, is the Dubai chocolate bar.  A single candy bar is nearly $20 but filled with creamy pistachio kunafa (crunchy wafery filling) that is delicious.   Totally worth the splurge.  

After the markets we said goodbye to our guide and Ubered to the Dubai Mall for lunch and a quick look at the Burj Khalifa.  I was hoping to catch the afternoon water show but for whatever reason it didn't play at the time listed on the website.  I think William had more fun walking around the mall than anything.  I forgot I had a teenage boy in tow.   I haven't been to a mall with him in about 10 years but he has recently been to our local mall with friends once or twice.  I think it's on its last leg (store) so this was next-next-next level!   It was fun to look in the shop windows.  And in one part of the mall there was a golf cart outfitted like a Rolls Royce driving old ladies around.   I wish we'd had longer there to see the aquarium and ice rink but we had evening plans so just head back to our hotel to freshen up and head out again!

Brickyard Battle

William and I got to spend a lot of quality time together leading up to and including Thanksgiving break!   The weekend immediately prior to the break, his team played in Indianapolis in a three-day tournament, so we drove up after school on Friday night.   As we were driving I was thinking how this particular road trip could be in my future a lot more in the years to come since both Purdue and Indiana University are along this same corridor and are likely on our college campus visit lists for next year....

But as for volleyball, this was a nice setup.  John was in Dubai for work, so it was just the two of us. We stayed at the JW connected to the convention center so parked the car and didn't move it for three days.  The boys played well and had a decent draw such that we had time for some team and individual relaxation.   The best part was William's cousins came to cheer him on Saturday morning!   He was so excited and played really well in front of them.   The boy ended up medaling for the weekend and we made it home on Monday afternoon in time to do laundry and pack for our Tuesday flight.

We enjoyed a team dinner at Social Cantina:  the moms and dad at one table and the boys at another.  Our waitress was fantastic and kept track of separate tickets by asking which jersey went with each adult.  She said she had teenage siblings and seemed to genuinely enjoy having us, which made the whole experience lovely for all.  So often when teams go out it's a perceived negative. 

Food & Wine

With a year of packed work and volleyball travel meaning we had very little time home together - much less a chance at a date night - we decided to tack a quick trip to Disney World's Food and Wine Festival in front of one of John's work trips in October.   The first afternoon/evening we enjoyed the Boardwalk area and Epcot, tasting and drinking our way through the festival.   That purple drink is Kansas City Boulevard Brewing Co. Ginger Grape Fizz Selzer and it was tasty.  However, I thought I had ordered a sampler size and since my first drink was a full size fizzy drink, I ended up ordering very little else the rest of the day!

We stayed one night at the Dolphin Hotel and ended up with a view of the Magic Kingdom fireworks.  I didn't realize that was possible from the Crescent Lake area and was very pleasantly surprised.   On the second day we hit up Magic Kingdom for a bit to see the Halloween decorations and ride Tiana's Bayou Adventure via Virtual Queue (our first time) and then over to our favorite park, Animal Kingdom, to wrap the day, before I had to head home for a weekend of volleyball!

I absolutely hated the beignets!  They were floating in a pool of honey.  I've had beignets before and never had honey so didn't realize that was a traditional presentation.   It was so messy and overly sweet.

A bit of a giraffic jam on our safari!  When we got off the safari, we made our traditional stop to see the gorillas and I was laughing at the long-legged bird perched on top of the under water hippo!