Long time, no see! My uncle was in for a week over Christmas break, and my family took this opportunity to do all sorts of touristy things.
One of our first stops was the Burj Khalifa. In my three and a half years here in Dubai, I had yet to visit its greatest attraction. The tour only goes to the 124th floor out of 160. The first photo here is not from the bottom, but from the observation deck on the 124th floor. The view was phenomenal, the skies weren't too cloudy, and not a single sandstorm threatened to ruin the sights.
From here, you can see the shadow the Burj Khalifa casts on the rest of the puny buildings.
Our next adventure was dune bashing. As always, it was a really good time and I had a lot of fun. The desert got much colder than I expected, and by the end of the night I was chilled to the bone (I'm actually just a wimp - the temperature couldn't have dipped below 60F). A flat tire also set us back a good half hour, but luckily we didn't miss the evening feast!
Christmas Eve rolled around much faster than I anticipated. We spent the evening with good friends and good food. I loved our tree this year, it was our first one here in Dubai! Unfortunately I don't have photos of the gift unwrapping. Our tradition is to open them on Christmas morning in our pajamas, and nobody needs to see me like that!
One of the perks to living in a Muslim country is that stores don't close for Christmas. We were able to score awesome barbecue, and catch the amazing fountain show at the Dubai Mall.
We also ate at Samad Al Iraqi, this amazing Iraqi restaurant, the day after Christmas. You know a restaurant here is good when it's filled with locals! This photo is of the traditional end of meal Moroccan tea. It comes in very small glasses, and is usually pretty sweet. I'm not great at capturing food photos - we always seem to inhale the food as soon as it arrives!
After eating some great food, we all stopped by the Souk Madinat Jumeirah. They had the cutest little Christmas market going on! It's amazing to see Christmas being celebrated here when as recently as 1995, Christmas decorations were supposedly illegal here. It's crazy how the times change.
I hope you enjoyed! Happy holidays!
<3 Lucero
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