a new adventure

Freshly browned and still glowing from the middle eastern sun, I would like to grasp at the straws of my vacation and share with you some of the shining moments of my 16 days in Dubai.

This is the view from my friend Maureen's 20th floor apartment, located directly on the

Dubai Marina. Maureen works as a teacher at a German school in Dubai and she and her boyfriend (who has an internship with a consulting firm there) were kind enough to host Thomas and me for a couple of weeks.

I wasn't really sure what to expect as we boarded out plane to Dubai a week after we booked our tickets (yay for last minute deals!) but it was the trip of a lifetime! Dubai is a young, booming city which is home to 71 buildings that stand taller than 591 ft and 51 buildings that are taller than 656 ft. (thank you wikipedia) We were craning our necks everywhere we went and snapping a lot of pictures. Although, to capture the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa I had to use the panorama feature on my camera:

Dubai is a multi-cultural city where you are just as likely to hear English as Arabic, and you are likely to feel that you ended up in a part of Las Vegas or New York that you never knew existed. It is extraordinarily clean and well kept, and there is a construction site around every corner.

We spent a lot of time seeing the spectacular malls and hotels:

Here is the Atlantis Hotel, at the tip of the Palm Jumiera Island. This hotel has a huge aquarium, water park and small mall inside. This island is one of two palm shaped islands that Dubai built.

Here you can see me "skiing" in the famous "Ski Dubai" indoor ski area in the Mall of the Emirates. This ski area has a sledding hill, ski lift and even a black run...it is so surreal to see snow in the middle of the desert!

Dubai is truly an imaginative city with so many creative buildings and incredible decorations. It is a mix of western and middle eastern culture and architecture and it was so much fun to explore. More to come soon!

~love~