2-22-07
Greeetings from the Renaissance Dubai Hotel!! My coworker, Jamison, and I got into Dubai last night and it was a pretty standard arrival into town evening. Got our luggage -- yes, it all made it -- got checked in at the hotel, then grabbed dinner. You know how it is, you want to try new stuff when you're in a new place and we heard this Cuban band playing in one of the hotel restaurants so that's where we wanted to eat. However, since we changed out of our traveling shoes -- literally-- and put on flip flops, we didn't meet the dress code for that one! Oh, it's so warm here which we are surprised at given that the weather we were expecting was supposed to be in the 50's. (I'm gonna have to learn the C > F conversion so I can understand the weather around these parts!). So for dinner we ended up at Harry's Place, an American styled restaurant / bar complete with am Asian band singing American pop tunes, and they did a relatively decent job with them too!

Not long after dinner it time for a shower and bed. I'd been up since 7:00am EST Tuesday and got to bed last night at like 4:00 p m EST, which means I'd been up for.....33 hours (is that right?). Now, the hotel is nice, but these beds -- WOW!!!! I've never in my life laid on something so much like a cloud! Needless to say, it didn't take long for me to pass out. I woke up a few times just being in a strange place and hearing weird noises, but when I finally looked at my watch and saw it was 3:30 pm local time, I freaked a bit because I'd just lost an entire day -- my first full day in a foreign country and I want to go see the place!

As we traveled to the hotel last night, we passed this place that had a showroom packed full of fully restored classic American trucks -- Chevy, Ford, Dodge -- and Jamison and I both went crazy at the sight! It was most wonderful to see so I'm sure we're going to go there at some point today or tomorrow before we leave. It's actually kind of funny to see the only cars on the road are all American companies. We rode in a Chevy Venture taxi van last night and the Dubai taxi company uses all Chevy and Ford.

Well, sorry no pictures yet. I didn't want to be a silly tourist snapping pictures of airports and the plane we flew on, and the front of the hotel at night then again in the morning. I may get a picture of the bed I slept on, however, because THAT was worth a picture!

I appreciate all the emails and encouragement. Know that you're all in my prayers and thoughts. Time to go see the city!