Dubai - New Years Eve
Trip Start
Dec 18, 2008
1
18
26
Trip End
Jan 09, 2009
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Woke up at 9am and headed out to the DIFC around 10am. Picked up some more minutes for my phone and plan on having lunch with Huda around 1:30 and then after go to the art gallery. Chris is having lunch with Ahmed at the Marina (Saj Express) and later we are going to try and get tickets to the AC Milan soccer game. All hotel parties have been cancelled by the King of the AE because of what is happening in Palestine so I think tonight we'll be going to a private party instead.
Alright, it's 4 am and I'm writing this entry after a night of drinking and going out. Huda and I went to lunch around 1:30 like we planned (no Ahmed time here!) and we ended up going back to the DIFC to a place called Santa Bonta. It was an interesting place actually, really different "make your own pizza and salad" type place. We ended up having a Greek salad and a light pizza. We ate about half the pizza and then headed around the DIFC to take a look at the art museums.
We first headed outside to take a look at the hanging statues (which by the way are not heavy like I thought, I think they are just paper mache) and we were trying to find the hidden "peek a boo" one. There are 30 hanging statues in all and they actually move because of the wind without falling over, how crazy! After seeing a few statues we gave up on looking for the hidden one and instead went to an art gallery called the "Opera Gallery". I guess they have this gallery in New York, Paris, and some place in Italy. Very cool stuff! I took a bunch of pics and Huda was able to get us a private tour of all the different pieces.
After the art gallery we walked back toward the apartment and ended up going to Mona's car so that we could go to Emirates Mall. This is the mall that has the indoor Dubai Ski park. It was a lot more packed than the other mall's I've been at which was surprising because Huda said it was the oldest mall in Dubai. Anyway, we walked around a few places to look for some jeans for me but the prices were way too high for me (we're talking about $120 per pair). We first walked around Nicholas Parkins and then Salsa's. After that we went to the Dubai Ski place of the mall and went to a café called Apres which was at the end of the ski slope. Very cool view of the place! We got a chocolate brownie and some smoothies (which Huda hated) and after about 15 minutes Chris joined us. We relaxed for a little bit and finally got kicked out because they had to close up for the New Years set up. Huda went shopping and Chris and I went to a pizza place so he could get something substantial to eat. Ahmed called us and he said he had tickets to the Shakira concert in Abu Dhabi. Chris wasn't really feeling it and since I was here to hang out with Chris we decided not to go. In hindsight I have a feeling it would have been a really fun time, oh well, we had fun either way. We left the mall and headed back home to get ready for the evening festivities.
We got home and watched Superbad while the girls got ready. After the movie Chris and I went to a coffee shop called Shakespeare's so we could catch up on work email. The girls ended up getting some Sushi delivered from Sumo Sushi so we had that before heading out to the party.
The party was at a friend's of Mona's (Faisal Behoul) out in Jumeriah and we drove to a super market where he had cabs come and take us to the actual house (he didn't want a bunch of cars at his place). It was a sweet looking villa with a pool outside and he had masks for everyone to wear before the New Year. He also had it catered with any kind of drinks that you would want. All in all it was a very fun time actually; I met a few cool guys (Ahmed Bansasi and Ahmed Boss) that I hope to keep contact with. Chris wanted to leave as soon as we got there because he wanted to go to a party at the Atlantis that was supposed to have the AC Milan players at. Long story short some guy that liked Mona was hosting it but Mona really didn't want to go because she didn't like the guy and Chris was pressing her to go to the party. At midnight we called a bunch of friends in the States to wish them a Happy New Year which was very fun, love having a phone now!! Oh, there was also some girl from London that I met that had crazy garlic breath, I called her out on it...heheheheh. So at about 12:30 or so we ended up leaving because Chris wasn't having a good time. So we drove forever all the way to Sharja to another party Mona knew about but by the time we got there it was pretty dead so we never actually went in. The fog was crazy though, couldn't see 10 feet ahead of you. We got back home around 4am and went to bed, looking back we should have stayed at the party.
