Stop me and buy one

A new flavour, as requested: Butterscotch ripple with chocolate sauce.  Would you like to try one?

Sand castles on the beach

These are four of the Jumeirah Beach Residences or JBR as people call them.  They are located in the Marina District, which is trendy yeah.

Sea

Early mornings and the hour before sunset seem to be the most bearable times of day in the summer.  At around 6pm, the heat has gone out of the sun and the humidity, which is at its worst after dark, has not yet built up. That is a fine time to go for a swim in the sea.  It is our favourite time of day, especially during the month of Ramadan, when office hours are shorter, so then, we can go every day after work if we want to.

Our favourite place to swim is the Jumeirah Beach Park.  People come from all over the world and they swim here.  When you are in the sea, you can strike up a conversation with anyone. It feels like a very safe place. I think we are all in there wondering about the other lives of the people splashing around us. Greeting each other with a smile and a 'hello', we break down the barriers between the different nations, although we still have problems understanding one another.  Two tall, slender Ethiopian men wanted to know where we were from, but conversation came to an impasse when they informed us they were not political.  Their English wasn't very good and we forgot that they probably spoke Arabic, so we didn't know what to say next.  

Some people swim athletically out to deep water and back and then with much muscle flexing, they stride up and down the beach keeping fit, while others frolic around fully clothed.  Groups of Filipinos are just having fun.  Chinese ladies wear broad brimmed hats in the sea and bob around.  Indians and Arabs come mainly with their families.  I took a snorkel once.  One bemused Indian man asked us "What are the benefits of swimming in this water? I do not know why are people swimming here.  What is the benefit?  Is it the salt is good for the skin and the skin ailments disappear? Or is it for the fat burning?  What is the benefit?"  Yet again, we didn't know what to say.  The pure joy of feeling the warm water on your skin and being able to exercise without breaking out in an uncomfortable sweat was what we were enjoying.  

As the sun sets over the water, the lifeguards whistle everyone out of the sea and there are showers on the beach and changing rooms. It is lovely.  The muezzins start up their prayer call and the Ramadan cannon booms out across Dubai, signalling that you can start your Iftar.  

Beach kitten

For our younger readers.

Question:  Why does the sun set over the sea in Dubai, when it is on the East coast of the Arabian Peninsula?

Driving on the Sheikh Zayed Road

Nearly home

Heading across the Creek towards Sharjah 

The anticipation of driving on the five lane Sheikh Zayed Road is worse than actually doing it, although you really do need to have some geographical knowledge of the area if you want to end up in the right place.  Basically, if you drive north you will end up in Sharjah and if you drive south you will end up in Abu Dhabi, so you can't go too far wrong!  You can use the road signs to learn how to read arabic numbers.






Here are some pictures of the downtown skyskrapers.  It takes just over ten minutes to get there from our house.

Dubai Financial District

The bridge over the road is a walkway to the Metro station on the right.

Blue Metro train wending its way past a couple of gold skyskrapers.

Outside

People outside the villa lead very busy lives.  There are builders across the road.  They arrive very early on a bus in their sky blue builders uniforms and they build away all morning until it gets too hot.  Then they sit down in a shady spot for the rest of the day and wait for the bus to pick them up again.  They are building a large villa for an Emirati family.  I do hope that I will get to meet the family one day.  All the houses have high walls around them, so it is very difficult to see who lives where.  

The other day there was a great commotion outside the house.  When I looked out,  a large digger  had come to clear up all the old palm leaves that had been left by the dustbin.  There was one man to drive the digger and one more to direct.  We have got a patch of sand to the side of our villa.  The next villa along has been painted a beautiful pink.  I love pink.  These photos were taken from the roof.  You can just see the city skyscrapers in the distance.  The red crane on the very right is on the site of a brand new mosque which is also being built.  It is Ramadan at the moment and the Arabs have put up a huge marquee to act as a makeshift mosque at the end of our road.  Every evening after sunset the place gets packed with cars belonging to people going to the mosque.  There is a men's entrance and a ladies entrance.  Not many ladies go to the mosque, so their area is much smaller; but we did see three last night!  You are never more than 500m from a mosque in Dubai, so I am not sure why they have to drive there.  

We have a stunningly beautiful communal pool and terrace .  There are bananas and dates growing on the trees and flowers which I shall identify at some point.

Strawberry sundae beach house

I thought you might like to see a picture of this beautifully iced, freshly made, real strawberry sundae - only just finished and with seaviews!  Can you see the air-conditioned bus stop?  Very Dr Seuss.

The pavements are pink too and with black and white stripes all along the edges.

Vanilla Villa

This is where we live.  It is the house on the end.  It is the colour of vanilla wafer and inside there are even wafer patterns on the walls.  In fact most of the houses in the area look as if they have been built out of ice cream; either vanilla, strawberry or coffee.  Luckily they never melt.