Day 130: So Long, Egypt — Arrive in Dubai in Time for Dinner with an Old Friend
Pickup today for the airport was at 7 am, so we were up and at ‘em again very early.
At the breakfast buffet we were discussing Dubai plans, including possibly going to the top of the world’s tallest building. Mom in her signature Memphis accent goes: “Why would I go to the top of the Burj Khalifa? We fly on planes. I know what it looks like from high up.” Classic contrarian.
Our overly attentive A&K host Mohammed greeted us when we landed in Cairo, already sweating with anxiety about getting us to our connection on time.
There were lots of jokes about Mohammed’s freaking out about our well-being — eg, he didn’t sleep at all last night worrying about our flights, that he was the guy in the orange vest waving our plane into the gate just to get us there on time, that he’d actually been following us in disguise on a donkey in Aswan to make sure we were ok, etc.
Mohammed, we love you.
We had to really scramble to make our connection to Dubai, and were one of the last to board the Emirates flight.
At one point, Teddy told James he could watch his iPad, to which James replied: “Whenever you tell me we can watch our iPads or eat candy, I get this big feeling of energy right here and it just blasts up inside my body [made the shape of a circle with his hands that exploded up his midsection].” Ha! We all know that feeling.
Interesting: On our plane, when the flight attendants were handing out the lunch menus, they placed red Emirates stickers on the headrest of any passengers who said they were fasting for Ramadan so that they would not be offered food or drinks. Then, those same passengers were given a to-go box of food at the end of the flight that they could then open later when the sun set.
We had a car transfer waiting to take us to our hotel in Dubai, the Atlantis on the Palm.
We made a few decisions when planning this leg that I was suddenly very happy about. First, that we had declined any and all official tours of Dubai. We could be on our own, something we all desperately craved by this point. And two, that we picked a place that was all about the kids instead of a chill retreat for grownups. They needed a release and deserved the reward.
The Atlantis is like Vegas, Disneyworld and the Bahamas all wrapped up into one super diverse, outrageously excess, tacky/cheesy resort destination for families. Our kids were in heaven.
After we’d checked in, we dropped Willa and James off with Grammie and Beepaw. They were off to explore the aquarium and have dinner just the four of them while Teddy and I got a very rare kid-free evening to meet up with Teddy’s old friend Abby Swetz from DC.
Abby, who I know as well but hadn’t spent that much time with, has lived in Dubai for the last seven years. We ate at a Gordan Ramsey restaurant in our hotel called Bread Street.
It was fun and super helpful to chat with her. She’s a high-energy, funny woman who broke the whole city down for us in 101 fashion, which was enlightening and useful. These are always the best conversations and the most informative, we’ve found.
We could have stayed several more hours peppering her with questions, but it was getting late and the kids had exhausted the chocolate fountain (“with unlimited dipping privileges”) at their restaurant and were ready for bed.
We bid farewell to Abby and met back up with my parents to take the kids to sleep.
Misc:
There’s so much security in Egypt — metal detectors at every tourist site, at every hotel and even bag scanners and metal detectors just to walk in the front door of the airports. We’ve had a lot of grownup conversations with Willa this year about topics that might otherwise have waited a little longer (eg, slavery, apartheid, kidnapping, death), but terrorism and hijacking is just not a can of worms I’m willing to open on this travel-heavy year. Barely want to think about it myself. So we basically just say they’re to keep out any bad guys and leave it at that.
