Which is 9:48AM, same day back home. My first full day in Dubai. I arrived last night at 8:20PM- I won't bore you with too many details, except that a 12 hour flight from JFK isn't too bad when broken up into 3 sets of 4 hour shifts: One watching TV; one sleeping in 1 hour stints; and one more watching TV. Emirates is a pretty nice airline, but the luxury is definitely up in business class and above- it's like each seat is it's own little capsule where you can lay down completely flat, and there are walls and even a lid that pulls down over the top, so you don't have to look at, share space with, or talk to anyone. Probably a very intimidating difference in price. Since I myself was very intimidated by that difference in price, all told it felt like just about any other plane ride; but there was no escaping the fact that I was on the other side of the Earth. Especially upon landing.
The Dubai airport is like a Vegas hotel without the vice- or the noise; bright lights; polished white marble floors, pillars; chrome; glass ceilings forever high. Feels like a palace, and not so much like an institution. I took pictures. It was impressive, what can I say...
Dan's apartment is really cool- 23rd floor of a tall glass and steel building. The buildings staring at us through the windows aren't quite as spectacular. I'm sure they're jealous. They'll probably get torn down and replaced by something greater in about 10 years. I didn't take a real close look on what Dan sleeps on-appears to be a normal matress from what I can tell, but from the looks of everything else it appears that everyone here sleeps on a king sized bed made of lots and lots of money. Like I said: Vegas without the vice- or most of it. I'm not the first person to compare it to Las Vegas. I might be the first person to compare it to Bellevue... certainly the way Bellevue has developed in the last 10 years. Though Bellevue's done a better job of staying out of the papers.
Dan's building is just one of many-like 40 or so- residential towers in an area of town called the Marina- I've never been to Venice, but I've seen pictures- so imagine that, but instead of small stone or brick buildings floating around, replace them with a bunch of 40+ story glass and steel residential skyscrapers along a decent sized river, and instead of gondola boats, it's filled with really flashy expensive yachts and ski boats. And all of this is man-made. The waterway never existed before. It stretches on for like 2, 2.5 miles. And they're building more buildings. Things haven't stopped around here.
Sleep was difficult after about 5AM- it was still 5PM as far as I knew, and I was anxious to see the sun again after 24 hours of having barely gotten to see it at all (a real pretty sunset in NYC while at JFK), but I waited until Dan got up and we got breakfast at the Jumeira Beach walk- which is sort of like an open-air shopping mall that faces Jumeira Beach. I wandered the beach this morning, real pretty, stretches on for miles. In every direction, right? Because it's the desert... The Persian Gulf is just the Arabian desert drowned in salt water from the looks of it. No reefs or anything-not in the shallows anyway. Just the shadows of the 40+ story high rises. I guess you can wade way, way out there and still only be waste deep. Brilliant blue.
Took a bunch of pictures- the operative word is 'panoramic:' I'm hoping I can convey the scope of everything by taking a bunch of pictures of an entire view. That said, a lot of these areas stretch on for much farther than I was willing to walk this afternoon. And it's even cooler at night. Everything lights up. I'll have time to take a few more of those when I get back from this little satellite trip to Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon that I'm leaving for tomorrow. Which I haven't packed for yet. I'll upload tomorrow all the pictures I took today- it's way too long a process, I haven't quite figured out how to get them to display how I want them to, and while I feel I'm putting up a good fight against the jet lag-no naps today- it's putting the hurt on me big time right now.
A small confession, and a word of advice to anyone who's never done anything like this before: Try to keep your eye on the ball; remind yourself of all the new and exciting things you're going to get to see and do, instead of worring about everything, calling everyone you know, and letting it remind you of everything you're leaving. Otherwise, somewhere between the doors of the aircraft and your seat in the back of it, you'll come dangerously close to losing it in the middle of the isle while saying your good-byes to your bother on the telephone.
Or don't. Bawl your pretty little eyes out.
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