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Most likely I'll post some pics as part of whatever update I give, and given that there is no way all three of my daughters will think that they look good in the same photo at the same time, pics will likely be pulled and right there is your incentive to check back every day to see how things actually went before something gets taken down.This section will contain the running commentary from the trip, in regards to the most recent country we have been in. But once I'm able to start the next country, I'll put the historical posts in the "Old Updates - XYZ" tab above. This all assumes I (or one of my kids) will be able to figure out how to make this website work.

If you want to read about the first 28 days and our time in Italy, then click here.

If you want to read about our time in Turkiye, then click here.

If you want to read about our safari in Kenya, then click here.

If you want to read about our beach vacation in Tanzania, then click here.

The Journey Continues - United Arab Emirates

To jump directly to one of our days in the A.E.U., click here:

DAY 54

We got up at 4am to go to the airport, arriving around 5:50am for an 8am flight. I think my mom and Megan’s mom would have a heart attack arriving this close to the flight time (remember that Robin arrived 8 hours before her flight home from Nairobi), and even I was a little worried because I wasn’t sure what the immigration steps might be. Luckily, the longest line we had was the line for the baggage (maybe 10 minutes). After that, there was a passport check, a metal detector/bag scan and them immigration control, but we got through the whole thing including checking bags in about 40 minutes. The departure area was actually quite modern and nice. We had time to get some pastries (seems like croissants and pan au chocolate are internationally available) and relax a little before boarding.

We were flying Fly Dubai, and it was generally fine. Most of us weren’t too excited about the in-flight meal, but really, who is excited about the in-flight meal in coach? The coolest thing was when we were about an hour out, the flight attendants who had told us to close our window shades, told us to open them and we could see the desert below for a while, before some mountains and then cities started to come into view.

Immigration in Dubai was pretty quick, although pretty far away from where we got off the plane. We ordered an Uber and got to our hotel. It would be hard to find a place more different than Zanzibar than Dubai, and that was part of the reason for this trip - to see as many different ways of life as possible. The city of Dubai is very modern, and as we drove down the highways and through the city streets, I could imagine that we were pretty much in any major US city.

We went out to Swiss Butter for dinner - very simple menu (beef, chicken or salmon) but it was good, very similar to what you might get in a US restaurant and just what the doctor ordered.

We went around the corner to a grocery store and got some food - so far its been interesting that Corn Flakes, Frosted Flakes and Rice Crispies have more or less been available in every country we have been. We also got some pasta, fruit and makings of a salad. The fruit was very expensive about $9 for a carton or strawberries that was about half the size of a carton of strawberries in the US. This is the kind of detail that my mom wants to hear about.

When we got home, I did a load of laundry. The washer, was a washer/dryer, so you put a load of laundry in and 4 hours later it comes out dry (I was a little skeptical of this, but at least that first load worked).

One of the ways that Dubai was so different than Zanzibar, was that we actually had internet. You may have noticed that my posts actually started showing up. It also allowed us to start doing more trip planning. I have been unsuccessful getting the evisa for going to Oman, and unfortunately, it apparently wasn’t an issue with my internet connection. It says you can get a visa at the airport, so hopefully that works.

DAY 55

Our first full day in Dubai, and we just stayed in the hotel. Megan and Keira went online and had a couple of people come to our hotel room to do their nails.

You can order almost anything to your room in Dubai (food, mani/pedi, massage, doctor, etc). Maybe its because people don't want to leave their house in the 120 degree weather during the summer.

Meanwhile, Lily was the only person who had been keeping up with the work out routine that we started in Italy, and she convinced me to take her to the gym in the building and show her how to work the machines.

Elenna had wanted Starbucks for weeks so we went for a walk to get one. It was located in a mall, and after we got it we stopped at a random place that sold Acai bowls and other things.

We had seen a playground on the way over, so Liam, Megan and I stopped there while the other three went back to the hotel. After a little bit at that playground, we went back to the hotel and played at the playground there. Megan went to get a massage, while Liam and I went to the pool.

There was a pretty big playground for a hotel.

After we got showered and the Liam and I got a haircut at a place just down the street. It was a bit of a gamble, having me get Liam get a haircut without Megan there to make sure it looked right. I was a bit more worried about it because I needed a haircut too, so we were getting our haircut at the same time. But in the end it worked out (I think).

Before and after pics of our haircuts.

We then made our dinner in the room and then watched “Now You See Me” - we all like heist movies, and any movies with magic make it more interesting. That said, the reason we chose that movie was that one of the theme parks we would be going to in a couple of days, there is a “Now You See Me” ride.

The next day Lily and I got up at 9:30am to work out (Lily is now a gym rat) and then go to the IMG amusement park. It was about 30 minutes away, and is the largest in-door amusement park in Dubai. There were a number of areas - Marvel, Cartoon Network (Powderpuff Girls, AdventureTime, and even a Lazytown area), Dinosaurs, and a Halloween area.

To my knowledge, LazyTown has been off the air for a decade, but they had an area dedicated to it. Randomly, Liam had seen a few episodes on YouTube (or as he likes to call it, YubeTube). Megan didn't think grownups were supposed to be climbing on the equipment, but I always identified with Robbie Rotten, the more lazy of the Lazy Town characters, so I couldn't pass up driving his car.

There were a few good rollercoasters, and for an indoor amusement park it was pretty good. Elenna likes roller coasters, but not going upside down, so we paid extra for Liam and Elenna to go to the Kids Zone (basically one of those indoor bounce house places), while the rest of us tried out the roller coasters so we could see if Elenna would want to go, One problem we found was that there was also some sort of school trip there too, and the kids there would just cut in line. Very annoying.

Unfortunately, Keira and I started to not feel well (I was getting a headache and she was feeling light headed), so it put a little damper on going on the thrill rides. But we found a bunch of slower moving rides (Adventure Time and Gumball), but only Megan, Lily and I were willing to try to last coaster. It was great, but I felt pretty beat up after it.

The best thing was that there were a bunch of Halloween decorations throughout the park.

Luckily we got out of there before the T-rex got too close.

There have been a lot of places that put up decorations through the city - I’ve been a bit surprised by this - but this was above and beyond.

Halloween didn't appear to be celebrated per se, but who doesn't like decorating and being scared?

The one regret for me was that there was a haunted house section, with an immersive experience where they had actors playing zombies come out at you. Megan and Keira were skeptical about it, and were on the fence, but when Keira wasn’t feeling well, we just decided to go home.

The ride home should have taken 30 minutes, but took over twice as long. We had order Cheesecake Factory to be delivered to the hotel, and it was supposed to take 85 minutes, but by the time we got to the hotel, the food arrived 5 minutes later. We enjoyed the dinner, and then watched Scream to celebrate Halloween (a day early). Lily had found a special chocolate place that you had to preorder it and they only went on sale 2x/day. Megan agreed to buy it if Lily did all the research and ordered it (and she is the only one of our kids who wouldn't be scared away by having to do that), so we also had some chocolate (and popcorn) for the movie. There were 6 types of chocolates and I'd say 4 of them were good, but the good thing was that although we all agreed about 4 were good, we all have different views about which 4 were good, allowing us to enjoy them all.

Megan is rarely going to say no if someone offers to have chocolates sent to her room.

After the movie, Lily started to notice that she has a rash that was somewhat painful. We spent some time tracking things down potential reasons, but ended up just giving her Benadryl and some Motrin. By the next morning she was down to a couple of spots.

DAY 56

Halloween! And what says Halloween better than going to a water park? So naturally we went to Atlantis in Dubai. If you are familiar with Atlantis in the Bahamas, this was similar but much larger. Liam doesn’t do big water slides and Elenna is also a bit scared of them, so the other four of us went on some of the bigger rides while they stayed together.

We started out doing some of the larger raft rides which were all pretty good. As I mentioned in Cefalu at AcquaVerde, the best thing about water parks is that you aren’t strapped in, so there are rides where you feel like you are about to be thrown off the raft, or the raft is about to be thrown off of the track. After that first ride, Keira got out and excitedly said that the adrenaline was really pumping.

Lily isn’t much for non-raft water rides, so when it was time to do the individual ride where you stand with your back against the wall and the floor drops out, she passed and went to find Elenna and Liam.

And maybe it was a good thing she did. The ride has the floor drops out from under you (in Disney terms, similar to the AquaDunk water ride on some Disney Cruises). The difference is that the slide goes straight down for a period, but this one then shoots you back up and the tube curves around and comes back down, twisting and turning. As we waited, the ride seemed to break from time to time and it took a little while before the next person got in. After that, they started moving people to another tube to go down. They got the first tube working again and Keira went first. And I joked with her, that they “probably” got it fixed. And she went down and the loaded me into the one a few feet away. I went down, and when I got out, I turned around and didn’t see her.

Now I started to worry that something had gone wrong, because I was only a minute behind and I can’t imagine that she went somewhere instead of waiting for us. But at the same time, I couldn’t figure out how the ride could be broken. It was several minutes and Megan still hadn’t come down, but then I noticed Keira walking across the walkway that we took TO the ride, but going in the opposite direction. I called across the court yard (since I couldn’t get there from where I was) and asked her what happened, and she said she would tell me when she came around.

Eventually, Megan came down and asked where Keira was. Keira told us that she went down the chute, then up the slide, but didn’t make it all the way around turn, so she slide back down and up the chute. Then she did that back and forth a couple of times before she stopped at the bottom of the curve. She looked up and saw a hole in the top of the tube with some rubber around it, that looked to her like a place made for someone to crawl out of, so she did. She then climbed onto a platform and a worker was walking over to her, to see if she was alright and get her off of the ride. Apparently, she was too light to ride the ride (or at least she was too tall relative to her height). But Keira took it as a win, that Atlantis thinks she is too skinny.

Meanwhile, Megan told us that at the top, nothing was moving and she was standing on the platform. The person running the ride said that Keira was stuck, probably because she was too skinny, which Megan first assumed was a joke to scare her since Megan was already obviously terrified of going on the ride. Then he said that someone was getting her and she could meet back up with Keira at the entrance to the ride and she realized that Keira probably had been stuck. Megan, now somewhat worried about her own safety, asked if she would get stuck, and the guy said no, which initially made her feel good, but then made her wonder if she was being called fat...

The next individual slide was a slide where two people could go together at the same time. Since we couldn’t all go at the same time, I went ahead when there was a space available. When they came down later, Megan won by like 10 seconds. Apparently, Keira again got stuck again and had to push herself down the tube at one point. So she officially failed two rides.

We met up with everyone after that and had lunch - the restaurant had a lot of options (and better options) than a normal “fast food” place at a theme park. After that, we went on the lazy river, one that Lily, Elenna and Liam had done before. But it was a lot of fun, and one of the few places that we have pictures.

Everyone had a good time on the lazy river

I also took some video, including this time lapse.

The lazy river wasn't always lazy.

After that, the four of us went to do more tube rides. After the incident where Keira was too light to go down the ride, I started paying more attention to the process for going on the rides. Many of the rides had a section where you had to stand before going on and they weighed you. Instead of showing your weight on a screen (which I had seen at some places), there was a light that was red, yellow or green. There was one family that was trying to go on the ride where the floor dropped out, and we passed them in line on our way to the second individual ride we went on and we warned them that the daughter probably couldn’t go on. But even the son, who was taller than Keira, but VERY skinny didn’t make it. As he stood on the scale, the line went from yellow to green and back and number of time before staying yellow.

So when the four of us stood on the scale to go onto this large raft ride, I was confident that we would be fine, but then they told us we were too HEAVY, so they made Keira and Lily go with a couple in their 20s and Megan and I go with two 10 year old kids. The ride was very cool, we started off with me with my back to the drop and then went down. They were pumping mist into the tube so it was hard to see. We weren’t sure if the kids even spoke English, but then one of the kids piped up and said, “Have you been on this ride? Be careful, there is about to be a drop”. I kind of found this advice to be somewhat obvious (you could see from the line that you would go down a drop, and them up a slide and then go back down the slide and down into another shoot. But I held on tighter anyway.

And a good thing that I did, because it was a sheer drop and I was almost thrown from the ride. Once again, the ride proved that water rides can generate a bit more adrenaline, but largely because you might actually fall out of the ride.

However, at this point, Lily’s hives were starting to come back and a couple on her arms were hurting. She stuck through the first two tube rides, but once we were going to move to the individual rides, she bowed out and Lily and I looked for a first aid station while Megan and Keira continued to go on rides. We asked a guy for first aide and they sent over a paramedic that gave her an antihistamine and some topical ointment, that made her feel better for a little while.

When Keira and Megan got back, they wanted to get Elenna to go on a raft ride. Lily wanted to just lie down, so I took Liam into another lazy river where you wear life jackets and the current takes you around. As we went around, we saw a Churro place, which reminded Liam that earlier I said we could get churros (I'm never against churros), so after that we got some churros (I recommended that we add “churros” to Liam’s list of sight words, so we don’t miss getting churros on our trip).

They don't allow cameras on the life jacket lazy river, so I had to be very quiet.

Megan, Keira and Elenna came back just as the park was closing, so we left and Ubered back to the hotel. Once again we ordered food to be delivered to the hotel while en route (acai bowls), and once again it arrived pretty much just when we did. After eating and showering, we watched Scream 2 to end our Halloween.

During the movie, Megan was texting our travel doctor about the hives, and he thinks its related to the anti-malaria pills. So hopefully we have a reason, and we were scheduled to stop taking them in 3 days anyway (you need to take them for 7 days after you leave an area). Plus, we encountered almost no mosquitos in our trip through Kenya and Tanzania, so we feel ok about stopping the regimen for her a little early. Now going to India will be a little more stressful, as the doctor noted that malaria isn’t big in cities in India (where we largely will be) and recommended that Lily not take the medication and instead “avoid mosquitos” while there. Um, ok…

DAY 57

Lily had gotten worse overnight, but she didn’t take any medicine (her next dose was supposed to be 1am, but she never got up to take it). So she took some benadryl and we decided that if she wasn’t better in an hour we would take her to a doctor.

The problem was that we had pre-bought tickets to the Burj Khalifa - the tallest building in the world, and the tickets were very expensive. We actually had a good view of the Burj Khalifa from our balcony. Although later in the trip it dawned on us that when you are the tallest building in the world, most places have a pretty good view of you.

The Burj Khalifa from our balcony.

So when Lily didn’t look any better, but didn’t look any worse, the 5 of us went there without Lily. When you look at the building from the outside, it looks very tall, but you say to yourself, “OK its tall, but is this really the TALLEST building in the world?” In large part, this perspective is thrown off because the area around the building is covered in sky scrapers, so all of the buildings are tall. We decided to walk over there because it was an 18 minute walk. We had found that Google Maps in Dubai didn’t seem to do as good a job as Google Maps in the US, and it tended to have us walk around on sidewalks of major streets, instead of cutting through pedestrian walkways and such. So we ditched the directions and walked towards the building.

On our way to the Burj Khalifa - a pretty good view of the building from far away.

From my perspective, it was way too expensive for what it was. You could buy expensive tickets to go up to floor 124/125. Or pretty darn expensive to go to 145. Or outrageously expensive to go to 154 (the building goes up to 160, but the top floors are private to the owners of the building). We chose the pretty darn expensive tickets figuring that 10 more floors couldn’t be worth the extra cost, but also that there wasn’t any point in going to the tallest building in the world and then only going up ¾ of the way up.

I think that was probably the right choice because those tickets gave us some VIP access and let us skip the lines to go up the elevator. The elevator to the 125th floor went up at a speed of 10 meters/second and my ears were popping as we went up. As we went up, the sides of the elevator showed light images of other tall buildings, so we could see us going above the Eifel Tower and the Empire State Building, etc, and the elevator was still going up rapidly. This was a great way to get some perspective on just how high we were going.

At this point, my mind flashed back to a couple of days earlier when we were getting into the elevator for our hotel. There seemed to be some confusion around one of the elevators, with two people who worked there at the door, and a woman asking if she could get in, and they said yes, and then we all piled in, and then that lady left the elevator and got into one on the other side of the hall. It seemed strange, but I figured that maybe she felt like the 6 of us had crowded her or something. The elevator took off and then there was a sound you never want to hear in an elevator - gears screeching and the sound like metal was twisting, someone hit a floor button and the elevator stopped on the 3rd floor. The two people who worked there, said that someone had complained about this elevator and the were investigating it, at which point we all jumped out of the elevator and asked each other why they would let so many of us (or really any of us) into that elevator? The mystery of that woman leaving the elevator was now solved.

So that thought was in my head as we went up 125 floors in the air. I’m not sure if anyone else was thinking of that (its one thing for the elevator to malfunction 3 floors up, its another 123 floors up), but if they were, none of us said anything. We got to floor 125 and then transferred to another elevator to bring us to 145.

The view was strange - it was actually a very good view of the city, it is just that the city was different from any other I had seen. There were groups of buildings in certain places creating a large neighborhood of sky scrapers, but then there would be barren land, or land that was being prepped for new buildings. Then there would be another cluster of buildings, then desert land, etc. On the way to the elevator, there was a little explanation of the construction of the building, and they showed pictures from 2004 when construction began (just 20 years earlier) and there was NOTHING anywhere around the place. Now there are sky scrapers and highways and store and restaurants - amazing what was built in the past 20 years. The building itself cost $1.5B to build, but the total cost of that building the immediate surrounding area was $20B.

The view from very high up. Why does Keira look like she's 12? A few times people have come up assuming Lily is the oldest.

On this level they gave us some free water, coffee and some cookies, that were essentially Fig Newtowns (which I appreciated), but might have been "date Newtowns". But after about 20 minutes we were ready to go. When we got to the bottom (we also had VIP access to the elevators back down which I wasn't expecting but was a nice surprise), I went back to the hotel to get Lily and bring her to a doctor, and the rest went to KidZania.

I walked back to the hotel, and the walk was even hotter than when we walked to the tower. So when I got Lily and she said that she felt a little worse, I decided to Uber there, even though it was probably a 10 minute walk. The people at the hotel reception said it was in the mall we went to on that first day, but Uber wasn’t able to find it, so I just Ubered us to one of the restaurants in the mall and figured we would find it from there.

We asked a security person, and it turns out there were two clinics in the mall - I had googled one earlier which was affiliated with the Emirate Hospital system, so we went there, since that sounded like it would have more resources/better doctors. We walked through a food court to get there and passed a bunch of places, about half were American (Papa Johns, Subway, Burger King, etc). We went into the waiting room and it looked like any nice urgent care center in the US. Clean, bright, and a receptionist at the front.

I told her why we were there and she asked if we had insurance, and I said we have US insurance, and she said it wasn’t accepted. Then she asked for Lily’s UAE ID, which we don’t have, but she accepted her passport (and I silently thanked Megan for taking out the passport and saying we might need it earlier before we went to the Burj Khalifa). She told me how much it would cost to see the doctor and I said that was fine without really hearing the number, because really, what was I going to do? Lily at this point had hives all over her arms, legs, stomach, wrists and many of them hurt.

They brought us to an exam room and took weight, blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, all standard stuff. Then we went out to the waiting room again and then we were called in to see the doctor. The doctor agreed that it could have been caused by the malaria medicine, but she wasn’t sure because these hives could be caused by a virus or bacteria or a lot of reasons. So she had the nurse give her a steroid shot (in the back for some reason) and then prescribed antibiotics, 2 types of antihistamines (one day time and one night time), and calamine lotion. They didn’t give her the shot though, until I had paid the bill.

I asked where to get the medicine, and they said that they could deliver it, but I had seen some pharmacies in the mall, and instead arranged to pick it up (I didn’t want to deal with missing a delivery or it going to a wrong address or something) even though, as I said earlier, you can get anything delivered to your house.

Since Lily wasn’t feeling well, and had been using her time in the hotel to do school work, I let her pick where we would eat and she picked Papa Johns, a family favorite that we can’t get at home anymore. After that, we went to the pharmacy and got the medications. Total cost of the physician visit, steroid injection, antibiotics, 2 different antihistamines and bottle of calamine lotion? 870 Dirhams. Or $236.86. I think that’s a pretty good deal since this was a hospital affiliated clinic.

My phone wasn’t getting reception, so I couldn't order an uber and we walked back to the hotel, which was fine because by this time (around 3:30) the tall buildings meant that most of our walk was in shadows and things were much cooler. We got home and I checked in with Megan, who said that it probably didn’t make sense to came back to that mall and join them at KidZania, so Lily did more homework and I read a little and wrote this blog.

Meanwhile, the other 4 went to KidZania, a kids play place where it was set up like a city and the kids would do jobs to earn money which they can cash in at the end for prizes (kind of like at an an arcade). We had been to one in Singapore 6 years earlier, and the older girls were excited to relive the experience, which got Liam excited to go. The jobs ranged from being a policeman to a window washer to a pilot or working in a hotel. Apparently, Liam wasn’t in a great mood. He had been a bit off all day, even at the tower, so he didn’t seem to enjoy it all that much, and had to be pulled/cajoled/forced to do some of the activities. Keira was too old to do the activities, but Elenna was a good sport and went around with Liam.

Apparently Liam had to be forced to work at the chocolate factory, but then wanted to do it again when he was done.

Of course, after doing them he usually said that it was fun. And when he got home, he confidently told me it was the “best day ever” (which is not the response I expected after hearing Megan’s version of events). Perhaps this was because of the toys that he got with his KidZania money (lollipops, matchbox cars, etc.).

With Lily not in the mood to go out, I knew that Keira is a homebody and always would prefer to stay in, so I suggested that Megan and I go out for a date night. I went on tripadvisor to find a good restaurant, and the best rated that was near us was a rooftop place that served sushi, so when Megan texted back that she was up for a date night and I should find a sushi place, it all came together nicely. It was even better because before we left, we checked on Lily and her hives had improved noticeably.

The food was solid and the view was great. But it also turned into a club later at night and they were playing loud music, even at 8pm. I guess that this just shows that we are getting older, but we would have enjoyed it a bit more if it was 15 decibels lower. That said, it was good to get out just the two of us.

A nice ending to a day that didn't go quite as planned.

DAY 58

Lily was feeling and looking much better (still a bit itchy, but much better). This was just in time for us to do a cultural center visit where we would eat brunch and learn about the local culture. The night before we had been joking that Liam was the first to get sick, then Elenna, then Lily, so that meant Keira was next. And lo and behold Keira said that her stomach didn’t feel well, so the 5 of us went out without her.

The cultural center was in an hold house in the old part of Dubai. They put us in a waiting room, and the guide there gave us some history on Dubai, and how it was a port city and for the longest time, the main jobs were fishing, pearl diving, boat building and business/trade. For the longest time, pearl diving was how the industry made its money, but in the 1930’s the Japanese figured out how to pearl farm, which made pearls much more available and dropped the price, cratering the Dubai economy. 30 years later, they found oil and that drove a resurgence in the economy, but after learning not to be dependent on one thing for your economy, they started to diversify into business (0% income tax has been a big draw) as well as tourism (part of the reason they built the Burj Khalifa and are going to be building a new talled building 1,000m tall (1km!) as well as all of the theme parks that we have been visiting). Basically, he told us that everything we see around us was built in the past 30 years, and you can pretty much see that - everything here is new and clean.

Then they took us into the main room and fed us food while going over local customs.

We got to eat a traditional UAE meal.

They showed us how they kept the houses cool in the summer (with a tower built into the ceiling that basically used convection to bring cold air in and hot air out). The most interesting part was when someone asked about marriages and how the dowry works, and how divorce works (essentially, if the man wants a divorce, he has to pay a second dowry). He said that today, there isn’t really dating, that the man will come to the parents and ask to marry the woman - but usually he knows her (works with her, went to school with her) and the parents will ask him some questions and then the girl will speak with him, and then they will decide if a marriage is a good fit (sounds like the daughter is the one who ultimately decides). But this results in the people not really knowing their spouse terribly well when they get married.

After that, we went back to the hotel because Lily and Elenna had work to do. That night we went back to the Dubai Mall, and ate dinner at Lily's favorite dumpling place (Din Tai Fung) and then watched the fountain show outside the mall, at the bottom of the Burj Khalifa. Keira was still not feeling well and stayed home. A fountain show was just one more example of how Dubai was like Vegas - it was like they weren't even trying to hide the fact that they were copying the Las Vegas tourist playbook (except for the gambling/alcohol/stripper parts).

This fountain show was actually better than the one in Vegas. But not better than the one in Disneyland.

After that we started walking home but then the Burj Khalifa had a light on its walls.

Not better than when Disney does the light show on the castle but still pretty. At least until they started throwing up corporate logos.

Then we came across a playground, so Megan, Liam and I stopped and Lily and Elenna walked back to the hotel by themselves. A pretty neat spot to be on a swing - with a view of the tallest building in the world.

We were having flashbacks to when we came across a playground in Paris that had a view of the Eiffel Tower as it sparkled at night.

For some reason, I found this playground equipment to be out of place in this super modern city.

Its log! Its big, its heavy, its wood. Its Log! Its better than bad, its good!

DAY 59

We didn’t have anything on the calendar, but Lily and Elenna had a bunch of school work to do, so Megan, Lily and I went to the gym to work out in the morning. Lily was feeling much better and Keira was still sleeping at 12:30 when we got home, but no longer feeling nauseous.

Megan went through a bunch of English with Elenna and I went through a bunch of math, while Lily did her work.We ate some food that we had in the room and then Liam and I went to the playground and the pool while Megan read by the pool.

After showering, we all went out to see “Wild Robot” in our outdoor, rooftop movie theater.

A good view of the sunset from the rooftop movie theater.

There weren’t normal seats, but rather circular cushioned seats that could seat 2-3 people and were more like the type of seating you might see around a pool deck at a fancy resort. You could order real food delivered to the seats and we settled in.

Unique seating, but I guess you can get away with it if you put your theater in a desert.

There were only 11 minutes of coming attractions, and I wasn’t sure if that was because this was an older movie, or if they never have the requisite 25 minutes of coming attractions at US theaters.

11 minutes of coming attractions! I could get used to that.

The movie was good - Lily, Elenna and I had read the book, and there were some notable differences, but overall, it was true to the story. I asked Liam after the movie if he liked it (he was sitting with Megan while I sat with Elenna) and he said that he cried a lot of times (which Megan confirmed). Definitely was a tear jerker.

When we got home, we found that the last load of laundry that we were doing didn’t come out well - it didn’t drain so our clothes were still soaking wet. I had hoped to do another load, but now I was stuck spending the next 5 hours trying to get the first load dry because we were leaving in the morning for our next leg of the trip - to a theme park area.

DAY 60

We left Dubai and went to Lapita, which is an area about 45 minutes away that has a bunch of amusement parts - Legoland, Legoland waterpark, Motiongate, and Real Madrid. One of the reasons that we chose the UAE as a place to visit was that it was basically a more family friendly version of Las Vegas - in the middle of the desert and in order to draw people there, they keep building ever larger attractions (amusement parks, the tallest building in the world, etc.) So although this wasn’t a period of time where we were just sitting in one place for 2 weeks, it was a stop on our trip where we figured our kids would want a break (for the most part) from constantly moving from museum to monument.

We got to the hotel around 10:30 and checked in by 11, which is when Legoland opened. This was a park day that was geared more to Liam than anyone - there were only two rides that looked a little more geared towards older people (a shooting game similar to Buzz Lightyear but skeleton themed) and a medium sized roller coaster. We did those two rides first, and then did the other ones.

Liam will never get into a picture with a character. But if I go in, then he will want to join me. Never fails.

We also found some time to reenact some pictures from our past visits to Legoland.

Why on earth did they make that giant rabbit with a chainsaw? And put it in multiple parks?

We quickly found that Liam was more interested in the periodic Lego building tables that were spread throughout the park than he was in doing rides per se. That said, we were able to move him through the park. The park was still Halloween themed, including “Brick or Treat” stations spread through the park where you could go and get a bag of candy (even if you weren’t wearing a costume). The girls were all in on that too.

We went on a few rides including a submarine ride. We were able to convince him to go on the medium roller coaster even though he isn’t a big fan and despite that, he enjoyed it.

The submarine ride was actually pretty cute with the aquarium.

But probably, the thing he liked most was the play area, which goes to show that we don’t really need to spend a lot of money on amusement park tickets for little kids.

Who needs rides when there is a play area?

We had been to Legoland in FL and in CA, and this was smaller than those two, and more geared towards younger people. It was deathly hot (although it actually would get 20-30 degrees warmer in the Summer), but they did a good job of putting up shade through the park. The weird thing was that they had a map of the “Brick or Treat” stations, and you were supposed to get your map stamped every time you went to a station. One of the stations was at the line to a show, so you had to see the show to get the stamp, and we went. It was a 3D show about Lego monsters having a party, and humans sneaking into it and then when they are discovered, being chased around.

After the movie, they had a dance party hosted by a costumed Lego Vampire from the movie. The weird thing was that they had dancers some out and dance to 3 songs, and the audience was just there watching them dance, without really any narrative or anything. Then the Vampire from the movie came out and did one game of freeze dance with the kids, before the professional dancers did ANOTHER dance scene for the audience. Overall, a pretty poor show but the girls were excited by it when a Glee cover of Thriller came on. Meanwhile, there were a lot of strobe lights, which still bothers Keira post-concussion, and she was pretty much done with rides after that. Although she probably would have been done after than anyway (she isn’t the daughter who shuts down Disney).

After a few more rides we went back to the hotel and had dinner and went to bed. Lily and I decided to get up early and go to the gym before going to breakfast and the parks.

DAY 61

Lily and I got up at 8 to go work out before our day at the Lego Waterpark. Then we went to the buffet for breakfast. It was a solid buffet, with the standard breakfast buffet foods (eggs, omelets, pancakes, waffles, croissants, fruit, cereal, etc.) but also food from over the world (noodles, fried rice, etc) which we normally don’t think of as breakfast food. And the pièce de résistance was a donut wall. Which made me wonder why all the walls in my house don’t look like this.

Donut walls should be a thing in every home.

We walked over to the waterpark at 11 and it was already close to 90 degrees. The waterpark was much more geared towards little kids under 12, and our plan was to try to get Liam to do all the rides. We found some shade where we could put our stuff and told Liam to play in a splash area while we got things settled. I’m not sure if it was because he was still tired or what, but he walked around in a daze. But he slowly warmed up and we went to a family sized raft (Liam always loves these).

They didn't allow cameras on the waterslide so I had to be real quiet.

After that, we went down a tube slide and I thought that Liam was likely done, but he agreed to go down a water slide where you lie on a mat, go face down, starting in a tube but then you come out the other side down an outdoor slide. What he loved most of all was that all 6 of us could go down at the same time and it was a race to the bottom. The person running the ride, got us all lined up and then he pushed Liam down first giving him a headstart, which we all thought was hilarious, and Liam was excited that he won.

We went down a few more slides, but then Lily started to feel light headed and went back to our chairs and took a nap. Liam went to the wave pool, built a Lego ship he could race.

Who needs rides when there is a play area?

Then we did the lazy river. There were lego blocks floating in the river that you could put together and make a raft.

Keira fit in with the Lego lifeguards.

We went on a few more rides and the wave pool and then went home and took showers.

Liam loved the wave pool.

We went out to a restaurant at the hotel that serves pan-Asian food. The food was good and at the end of the meal they brought out a box of 5 different flavor ice creams and we had to guess each one. We got Greek Yogurt and White Chocolate right, but didn’t get Lychee, Cardamom, Lemongrass (we guessed Lemon). A pretty fun surprise.

DAY 62

It probably seems strange to anyone reading this in the US, but if you are on a 10 month trip around the world, it is difficult to keep track of the day of the week, much less the actual date. And this was true even on election day. We were obviously aware of the election (we submitted our absentee ballots from Kenya) but we didn't really have the constant reminders that we would have had back home. I think that for our mental health, that was a good thing.

We were 9 hours ahead, so the night before, as we were going to bed, the polls were just starting to open and we knew that there wouldn't be a winner until the next morning our time (at the earliest). So when we woke up, the day was off to a bad start as the election was heading in the wrong direction.

The day was further complicated because the tickets to Tokyo Disneyland went on sale that same day at 10am our time. The theme park in our complex at our current hotel that we most wanted to go to (Motiongate) opened at 11, so that left us a little time to make the reservations and then get there for rope drop. Unfortunately, Disney was changing the plans available for the month we were going there, so we couldn't see what the options were or do a practice run for buying them, so it was a bit flying blind. Further complicating things, we had had some trouble buying things in certain Asian countries for fraud alert reasons (probably because we were in a place like Kenya, using a VPN, and buying something in Asia), but there was a risk that we might not be able to buy anything because our cards would be declined. The good news was that some friends of ours from San Fran were planning to meet us there, so they were also going to try as well. We heard that we could go get into the on-line queue before the official time so we did that and were told that it would be over an hour before we could get on.

So for the next hour we were on 4 different devices (2 computers and 2 phones) trying to get on, with our friend Mike in San Fran on another device. Megan got on first, and I was a few minutes behind and Lily was a couple minutes after that. By the time Megan got on, the package we wanted was sold out, so we focused on another package which was a 2 day package. Lily started going for a 3 day package, and I decided to be redundancy to Megan's 2 day package in case something went wrong. Megan got all the way to the end before being kicked off. I got about half way through before getting error messages that didn't kick me off, but also wouldn't let me go forward any further. Lily however, was able to make the booking. It wasn't ideal because it was an extra day in Disney (which is never bad, but was taking up more of the vacation than we planned) and it cost more, but at least it was booked. Disney is amazing at so much, but this online booking process is always a complete disaster - but maybe that is part of their plan - to make it such a mess that you end up buying the more expensive thing and somehow feel happy about it? At this point (about 90 minutes after the packages went up for sale, both Keira and Mike had wait times that were still over an hour.

But it was now 11:30 and by the time we put our computers away and left for the park we were an hour late. It was over 90 degrees, so the walk over was tough and given that over half the rides were outside, we knew we were in for a draining day. As we got into the park, the ticket woman said, "I just want to warn you that we have a school group here so there are over 1,000 school children here if you would like to buy the fast pass". Given our experience at IMG and how the school group kids cut the lines we debated it, but since the parks had been pretty empty, we decided to do the first ride and see how it went.

My girls are "Team Peeta" but I'm definitely "Team Gale".

We went to the Hunger Games roller coaster, which was great. The area was themed well outside, and the line also had good theming. The coaster went upside down and backwards, so Elenna watched Liam while the rest of us went. After that, we went on another Hunger Games themed ride where the line (and all of the decorations) was much better than the ride. The lines weren't too bad and although there was some cutting, we were better prepared for it, so we skipped the fast pass.

After that, we went to the Smurf area which was pretty neat. Again, the theming was great as all the buildings looked like mushrooms. The rides were much more kid friendly and Liam went on them all.

We all thought that the theming was smurfy.

My kids were all vaguely familiar with the Smurfs and liked the area. From there we went to the Dreamworks section, which was indoors (Thank god! If the whole park was outdoors, it would have been miserable. But enough was indoors that it was doable). The Madagascar roller coaster was really good, and the Shrek rides were also quite good.

\

Good theming and photo spots.

Keira also got a picture taken with her co-star from Shrek the Musical, but they had the wrong height listed for Fiona.

We all enjoyed the Shrek section of the partk.

Meanwhile, Shrek and I have some things in common; juggling our kids.

Shrek and I exchanged some parenting advice.

We tried to go on the How to Train Your Dragon ride, but it was down for maintenance. After that, we went on the river rapids ride where you are in a circular tube. It was themed as Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Then we did a Ghostbusters shooting ride and a Hotel Transylvania ride. There was also a giant drop tower than was themed as Zombieland and only Megan, Keira and I would go on it. There were two big coasters that where you not only went on a roller coaster, but your seat would spin as you went on it (Now You See Me and John Wick. The description of the John Wick roller coaster was "The only John Wick themed roller coaster in the world!" I'm not sure if that is a ringing endorsement, but it certainly isn't a good description of what kind of ride it is), and the kids and Megan didn't really want to go. So on our way out, I recommended we go to see if the How to Train Your Dragon ride was back up. It was and we enjoyed it, and we then convinced Elenna and Liam to go on it because it wasn't too bad. Liam like it so much, we went on twice.

We all watched the movie before going here, but the kids all thought it looked too scary to actually ride.

At that point, the kids were all ready to go home, but we hadn't gone to see the Real Madrid theme park. We weren't sure what a theme park themed after a Spanish soccer team would be like, but that was part of the draw. Another draw was that it was originally a Bollywood themed theme park, but then converted to Real Madrid and the potential for it to be a disaster seemed high.

So Keira, agreed to join Megan and me, and we headed over. Outside, there was a giant Taj Mahal replica, but it wasn't in the park itself, so I didn't count that as Real Madrid not changing things.

Technically, this was outside the park, so not part of Real Madrid, but very much randomly there if you didn't know that Bollywood used to be there.

In general, they did a decent job, and if you didn't know it was Bollywood themed before, you wouldn't now. There were only a couple of rides, and a couple of "experiences" that we didn't check out. We did go into the sports complex where you could take penalty kicks against a computer or shoot baskets against an opponent.

All of my skills from 5th grade PAL soccer was on display.

the one ride we did go on was the swings - it was just like a normal swing ride at a carnival, where you sit in a swing and the ride spins. The catch was that it then went about 200 ft in the air. Pretty cool view, and although Megan is afraid of heights she enjoyed it.

After some churros and ice cream we went back to the hotel, but we hadn't eaten dinner so we went to the restaurant by the pool. In the middle of the dinner, 3 guys came out in Polynesian garb and did a dance. There was only 2 other people in the place besides us and it was a bit awkward, and a surprising way to end an eventful day.

Megan might have liked this show more than me.

When we got back to the room, our bed was decorated. This was a much better end to the day.

A nice touch from the hotel.

DAY 63

Lily and I got up early and worked out, and then we all went to the buffet for breakfast. From there, Liam went to the kids club, while Keira and Megan went to the pool to read, and Lily and Elenna did some school work. Meanwhile, I went to the airport to get the rental car. We didn’t need to leave the hotel until 3, but I went to the airport at 11 in case there were any issues getting the car. And good thing that I did.

First, the Uber dropped me off in the right vicinity, but in the wrong place. I walked around and asked a couple of security guards before they sent me to the place to pick up the car. When I got there, they told me I had to check in, inside the airport and then bring the paperwork back to get the car. So I eventually found the desk in the airport and the woman told me that the had a 5 seat car for me (even though my reservation was for a full sized SUV). I told her that wouldn’t work, and she told me that it was Hotwire’s fault, because they don’t even rent those cars (it was a Chevy and the place only had Ford cars). She said that she could get me a larger car, but at a higher price, but when I looked at the car, I could see that it technically had enough seats, but it didn’t seem likely to be able to fit all of our luggage too. By now it was about 1pm, and I still needed to get a car and get back to the hotel (about 30 minutes away), so when she suggested that I fight with Hotwire about getting the right sized car, I decided against it (since they didn’t even have a car that could fit us).

So I went to 3 other places before finding one that had a larger car available. The car was big enough, but likely would still be a tight fit for our stuff, but I rented it anyway. That said the cost was 2.5x what my original reservation was for.

After going back to the place to pick up the car, I waited for 15 minutes before asking the person again when the car would be ready, and he said it was in another terminal, so he had someone drive me over there to pick it up. I got on the road and got back to the hotel around 2:50, more than 2 hours after I thought I'd be back, and only about 10 minutes before I wanted to leave.

Unfortunately, Megan wasn’t having much better luck at the hotel. After having a relaxing time at the pool, they went back to the hotel room to pack and shower (we had late checkout at 2pm). But when I said I wouldn’t be back before 2, they had to finish packing my suitcase as well as Liam’s (luckily, I had packed about 90% of both of those suitcases the night before). Then the kids went to a restaurant to get lunch while Megan waited for the bellhop to come and get the suitcases. When I got to the hotel at 2:50, Megan was still waiting for the bellhop (50 minutes later).

I told the bellhop that she was waiting and they said they would send someone to get the bags. 10 minutes later, the bags were in the car, and the kids had brought Megan and my food to the car. I ate a hamburger on the drive to the next stop which was a desert camping (really “glamping”) experience.

We got to the gate at 4:05 for our 4:30 reservation, but that was actually cutting things pretty close. By the time they brought us to the camp site, we had just enough time to drop off our bags and then be brought to the dinner location. But the tent that we had was amazing (Megan noted that "glamping" might be her new favorite thing).

It would be hard to say that we were roughing it in this tent that had a shower and bathroom like this.

The first area had relaxed seating areas where they brought us drinks and some food. They also had a few activities such as camel riding, falconry, archery and sand boarding.

A lot of cool things to do before dinner, with a beautiful sunset as the backdrop.

We got some pictures by the sunset which was quite beautiful, and the reason that we went there.

Whenever possible, Liam will be on a swing.

After that they brought us to a secondary location at the bottom of a sand dune that was decorated with lots of lights.

The dinner location was really neat and any time you get that many lights, its going to look amazing.

There they fed us dinner and the food was very good. There was also a show during the dinner. The first act was a belly dancing type performance.

Much less uncomfortable than the belly dancer on the Turkish cruise

.

It was followed by a number of different acts with fire.

Fire shows are always entertaining. But as I watched I had to ask myself, how does this guy figure out that if he spins fire in a certain way, it looks cool? How many ways does he try that either burn him or don't look good? What kind of person does this for a living?

About halfway through the performance, Liam was getting bored, so he went off and played in a little kids area, that had a bunch of table games. Eventually, he realized that they were showing the Paw Patrol movie on a big screen and went over there. Megan wasn’t as excited about this part since she could see him at the play tables, but he was around the corner for the movie. But there was a person working in that area that said it was fine and he was usually the only kid there (or one of 2 or 3). He had a great time sitting there and eating loads of popcorn. Later on he found out that there were marshmallows too (I might have pointed it out), so 90% of his dinner that night was popcorn and marshmallows.

Paw Patrol and popcorn can keep Liam busy for quite some time.

After the performance, we went back to the camp. Megan and I decided to go out to the outside area to get a drink, so Keira babysat Liam (who was sleeping in our tent) until we got back. But we were both a bit tired and skipped the drinks and just talked and looked at the stars,

Went back to our room to relieve Keira and then stayed outside in front of the fire they set up in front of our tent (a gas fire so it was easy to put out) for another couple of hours. It was incredibly peaceful and quiet, and not for the first time, I was reminded a bit of Wellfleet. Driving to the camp from the main road on the sandy side roads reminded me of the dune tour we did for Megan’s 40th birthday party. Meanwhile, the quiet night and looking at the stars, surrounded by sand dunes was very Cape Cod.

The one problem was that because it was so quiet, you would periodically hear some small sound and start to worry that something was coming. This was definitely NOT reminiscent of Cape Cod, nor was the warning that when we went in and out of our “tent” (which had glass sliding doors), we were to close the doors every time tightly and not to leave our sandy shoes outside, in case something was to crawl in the tent our our shoes. I asked what we should be worried about, and they said scorpions and snakes. So as we sat next to the fire, there was also a certain amount of scanning the nearby area to make sure nothing else was sharing the space with us. This was actually a common problem - every time we were somewhere where there wasn't light, and the potential view of the stars would be amazing, there was also potentially wildlife out there that we wouldn't want to run into. But definitely a cool place that I would highly recommend

DAY 64

We got up early to see the sun rise. When we had checked in, they told us that we could climb the dunes to get a better look at the sunrise, but not to go over the dunes, because on the dunes, they could see us but if they can’t see us, then if something happens, they won’t know. That left us a little bit on edge, wondering what might happen to us, and bringing back thoughts of snakes and scorpions. They had told us that those animals were unlikely to be around the tents (but still gave us flashlights to walk around at night), but farther away they might be there.

I had climbed to the top of the dunes while everyone was getting ready, and the vantage point was better but still not ideal. Plus, as I walked up there, there were A LOT of holes in the ground that theoretically a scorpion or snake had dug, making the trek up and back a bit nerve wracking.

There were a lot of these types of holes in the ground- at least 50.

Everyone came out of their tents and we took some pictures near our tent since everyone was a little afraid to go to the top of the dune.

We were a bit afraid to go too far from the camp, but you can see the sunrise, right?

But then a person who worked there came over and said we should go to the top or we would miss the sunrise. He brought us to a little different place than I had gone and he helped get Liam up to the top. He said not to worry about the holes, but didn’t give a terribly good reason not to be scared.

The worker at the hotel was kind of dragging Liam up the hill, but I guess that's more than I did.

The view of the sunrise was beautiful. Behind us, we could see a bunch of hot air balloons coming over to see the sunrise as well.

This was worth the climb and potential loss of life.

After that, we went back to our beds and went back to sleep for an hour or so. On our way to breakfast, we passed some trampolines that were built into the ground. Liam loves anything where he can jump or bounce.

Liam got everyone bouncing.

Then we ate breakfast then went on another camel ride.

Our kids weren't excited about the second camel ride in 2 days, but we told them they couldn't pass up the opportunity to ride camels in the dessert.

The thing about riding the camel was that they had you get on the camel while it is sitting down. This means that the camel has to stand up while you are on it, and it stands up in a very strange way that makes you feel like you are about to be thrown off. And then the proceess repeats itself in reverse when you stop and need to get off the camel.

Getting on the camel was easy since it was lying on the ground. Staying on the camel was a little more difficult.

Then a little archery before going.

All that archery at Adventure Guides prepared Elenna for this moment.

We drove an hour and half to the WB Hotel in Abu Dhabi. I drove the whole way and it was a little bit difficult because the signs were half in Arabic and half the time the Google Maps didn’t have a good description of what the signs would say wouldn’t always match up to the English parts of the sign said. When I went to pick up the car, I missed the first turn I had, but luckily the maps automatically correct so it wasn’t’ that big of a deal. The second thing that made driving a little difficult was the rotaries. There were about 5 large rotaries on the way to Abu Dhabi that were 3-4 lane rotaries. Most of them didn’t even have turns as options, they only went straight (or I guess you could do a U-turn. It was kind of weird, I half wondered if they were built in with some view that eventually a road would be built there because there was so much construction going up that eventually they would need it). But it actually pretty confusing because if you are in lane 2 from the wight and you are in the circle turning off so you can go straight on the highway, you have to cross lanes 3 and 4 to get back onto the highway. In theory, they are also turning there too, but its a risk. Luckily, the highways weren’t too busy.

We had to stop and get gas on the way. The good news was that the gas station was full service so I didn’t have to do anything. The rental car woman wrote out the name of the gas I needed, so I was good. I thought that it was interesting that they filled the gas up first and then charged me (in the US, they start running the card before filling).

We were staying at the Warner Brothers hotel and the hotel was themed well, starting with a luggage cart outside from famous WB characters (the Flintstones, Batman, Wonder Woman, Scooby Doo, Froddo Baggins, etc).

A bit random, but fun to see what characters luggage might look like.

Inside, they had a bunch of characters from Teen Titans, Tom & Jerry and Daffy Duck.

Our kids aren't excited about character pictures, but I am (as long as there is no line).

Our room wasn’t ready so we went to the WB park, which was an indoor park. We were all pretty impressed by the theming of Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner, Flintstones, areas. The Scooby Doo ride was also pretty good.

We all enjoyed the theming, even though most of the characters were from my childhood, not our kids'.

After a few hours our room was ready and we went back and I returned the car. Luckily, returning the car was much more straightforward than renting it.

Then we hung out at the room for a little then ordered room service and watched How to Train Your Dragon (a little late because we already went on the ride at Motiongate). We had all forgotten how good a movie it was. Then Keira, Lily, Megan and I watched The Boys.

DAY 65

We got up and went to the breakfast buffet. We tried to go to the themed restaurant but it was crowded so they sent us downstairs to the fancy restaurant with the same buffet food (although we found out later that it generally had the same food, but was a little bit more limited, and had a lot less kid friendly (ie candy) food). We were a little bummed out to not be at the themed restaurant, but we were in a bit of a hurry. We wanted to leave the hotel at 10 to get to the Grand Mosque, so we could be there 30 minutes before our tour was supposed to start.

Unfortunately, Lily wanted some medicine and we forgot to give Liam his allergy medicines (he had been coughing the past few days) so we had to go back to the room and got a little late start. Then the Uber took much longer than it said it would to get us and we were now arriving 15 minutes before the tour. It actually would have been even longer, except that the Uber driver looked at our destination and said, “Are you going to the Grand Mosque? This isn’t the right address” (apparently, I had put in the name of another mosque into Uber and we would have gone somewhere else). That earned him a big tip. He had to drop us off a distance from the mosque and we had to go down an escalator into a mall and then walk to the entrance. Then, there was another line to wait in to check our tickets.

This is where we ran into trouble because there were two women at the entrance who were turning away people who weren’t dressed conservatively enough. We were aware of the rules and reviewed the regulations the night before and thought we were dressed appropriately (Men long pants, no sleeveless shirts, but women had a much longer list - hair had to be covered, sleeves down to the wrist, pants or dresses down covering the ankles, no clothes that were see sheer/see through). However, Megan and Lily were flagged as having long sleeved shirts that were, in their view of the women at the gate, too transparent (they were light colored shirts where you could see the outline of their dark colored undershirts but no one would call them see through). So they had us go into the mall and buy clothes that would work. $100 later, we were back in line and walked to the area where the tours started. 11am was the tour, and it was now 11:06 and the security guards told us we would have to wait until 12 to get the next one.

The Grand Mosque was beautiful.

That was way too long to make the kids wait (it was now near 90 degrees and we were standing outside the mosque and a lot of the tour of the mosque involved the open courtyards), so we decided to just walk around. The good news was that the tour that we missed was a free tour, so no money lost. But as we walked around, we felt like we really would have benefited from some guidance. We saw a tour guide with a group, and Megan asked me to ask him if he was a free guide or part of a tour group (we could have paid to have someone bring us there and take us around, but the tickets to the mosque and the tour were both free, so we didn’t do that). There was really no way to tell without asking him, so I asked him, and he said that he was doing “his tour”, and I said, “Oh, OK” and started to walk away. But then he said that we could join him if we wanted to, and I asked how much it would cost and he said it would be free. I had actually found everyone that I talked to there to be very friendly (except the women who made us buy more clothes), but this was above and beyond.

A beautiful courtyard, and everything looked new.

So we joined his tour and walked around the mosque. The Grand Mosque was huge and very ornate, with marble carvings and such, but it didn’t have quite the same feel of the mosques/churches we had visited in Turikye and Italy; it just felt a bit new. It turns out, that like everything else in the U.A.E., it was new, with construction finished about 20 years ago (at this point I realized that if we find anything older than the 4,000 year old obelisks, it likely wouldn’t be in the U.A.E.).

Inside we were shown the prayer rooms and heard about the work necessary to complete the construction (marble work done by people in India, with a style similar to that used in the Taj Mahal), the decorations (the prayer room has the largest rug in the world) and a bit about the Muslim religion. Even though the tour was free, when it was over I tipped the guide.

The original plan was to go to a large mall in Abu Dhabi, but since the mosque was attached to a mall, we decided to just eat lunch there. Since we had just eaten breakfast a few hours earlier, we just got some Starbucks and some ice cream (I got camel milk ice cream, which tasted very sweet - no one except Liam would try it, and he liked it).

The ice cream wasn't half bad. I'm not sure why everyone else had a problem with the camel part, since cows aren't exactly normal looking animals.

We finished eating and still had about 80 minutes before we had to leave, so I brought Liam over to a play area, and paid for him to go into the climbing gym. Meanwhile, the girls did a little bit of shopping and sat in the food court.

We all enjoyed the theming, even though most of the characters were from my childhood, not our kids'.

Then we went to Qasr Al Watan, which is a palace that the country uses for government work and hosting dignitaries. I had read that the tour (which I did pay for) was 30 minutes past the gate, so we left with enough time to be there 30 minutes early. But we probably should have left 45 minutes of time since there was a line to show the tickets, security screening, then another line to show the tickets for the tour, then ANOTHER line to get on a bus to go to the palace from the visitor center. The good news was that since this wasn’t a mosque, there wasn’t any restrictions on the clothing to get inside (at least not that we weren’t already meeting).

We only needed 25 minutes to get to the place where the tour started, but it felt like 50 since we had missed the last tour and I was therefore stressed the whole time.

Liam thought we were in too many lines.

The palace was amazing - very large and very ornate. There were a number of chandeliers, marble mosaics, interesting stained glass windows, etc. However, once again, it felt pretty new - in large part because it was - it was less than 20 years old.

They showed us the area where they hosted heads of state for dinner (it had a stage where there would be a performance especially tailored to the interests of the visitor, and no performance was ever repeated). They showed us the room where the serious discussions take place. One room, which was a presentation room, had a 12 ton chandelier, that was 3 stories high and inside it was an infrastructure with stairs so that the person cleaning it or replacing the lightbulbs could walk around it and up to the top.

This chandelier has as many floors as my house does.

It was interesting to hear how Islam doesn’t allow pictures of people or animals in their artwork, and that is why the walls here (and the mosque) had pictures of plants or designs. Elenna really like the color scheme and decided that in her house (or giant palace) she would copy it.

Elenna was scoping out the color scheme for her next house.

After the tour, we went back to the room. At this point, Liam was tired so we let him watch his ipad, but Megan, Keira, Lily and I went to the gym (Elenna selflessly decided that she would take one for the team and NOT work out, and just watch Liam instead). After that, we went to dinner which was an Asian buffet at the themed restaurant that we tried to go to for breakfast. The food was really good (especially for a buffet), and everyone agreed that if I was still writing reviews of restaurants, I should give it a 5 star rating.

Then, we went back to the room and watched How to Train Your Dragon 2. Lily wanted to read, but once she realized what movie we were watching, she grudgingly decided to spend time with us. Meanwhile, we hadn’t done laundry in a while and the cost of the hotel to do the laundry was egregious (probably would have been over $1,000), so I downloaded an app and ordered a laundry pickup for the next day.

DAY 66

After going to the buffet breakfast, everyone but Lily went to SeaWorld - Lily had school work and a practice ACT exam (which she got a 34 out of 36 on without studying!). The WB park was right across the courtyard from the hotel, but Seaworld required a bus.

SeaWorld has somewhat of a mixed reputation for how it has treated animals, but the tickets came with our hotel stay.

We got there around the opening time and it was pretty empty, which has been a theme for all of these parks. We first went to the Manta roller coaster. It was very different from the Manta roller coaster in Florida (which is a top 10 roller coaster in my view), but was still quite good - a very long coaster. But after that, we realized that there really weren’t a lot of rides in the park (Manta was the only grownup ride). So we went on a few of the smaller kid rides in the park and let Liam play in the play area for a while.

Liam did some deep sea diving in the play area.

Since there weren’t many rides, we did a couple of shows. The first was a Sea Lion show and then there was a Dolphin show. Both were decent, but you can’t watch a show at Sea World without thinking about the bad press that Sea World has gotten about how it treats its animals, and whether this is really good for them or not.

It was cool to see what the dolphins could do, but then you wonder how the animals are treated.

We decided to work our way back to the exit and then passed another ride that we didn’t know what it was, but was billed as a "360 degree virtual underwater experience". So we went in and it was actually really neat. It was in a room like a planetarium, and the entire wall/ceiling/floor was covered in screens, with everyone in seats along the walls. The story was we were traveling through the ocean in a hypersonic machine, and whole floor would rotate and move as we traveled along, and the screens made for an interesting effect. None of it was too fast, or disorienting, and even Liam liked it.

We also fed some stingrays who have really crazy mouths.

When we got back to the hotel, we got a snack and then Megan, Lily, Keira and Elenna went to work out while I did some school work with Liam (my back was hurting at this point after carrying Liam for a while).

We went to dinner at the rooftop bar in our hotel, which had a great view.

A great view of the sunset from the rooftop bar.

After that, we went down to the pool where they were showing Wonder Woman. Everyone but Lily and I fell asleep, but everyone said that they liked the part that they saw. On the way out we took some towels because the plan was to go to the water park the next day.

Wonder Woman is a better movie than you would think based on the number of people who slept during it.

DAY 67

After the buffet breakfast (which was great but was the main reason that I had gained about 10 pounds since coming to the U.A.E.) we walked over to the waterpark. As we walked into the park there were a bunch of characters on the wall - characters which, from what I could tell, weren’t from anything except this park. So there was a little bit of theming throughout the park, but was more a water park than a theme park.

By this time, Liam was a water park expert and went on all of the rides that Elenna would go on. But Megan, Keira, Lily and I started with a few of the biggest rides and a roller coaster. After we did the two tube ones, Lily and Megan went to find the other two kids, while Keira and I went on the bigger individual slides. The third one we went on was one where the floor drops out, and Keira went on it. This time, she got all the way down, and I told the person operating the ride that at the last park, she got stuck halfway down, and the operator said, “Yeah, that does happen some times.” I tried to go on, but they told me that I couldn’t go because I had a back pocket with a zipper. The woman said that even though there is a flap that covers the zipper, when I went down it could uncover, and I thought that she was going to say that the zipper could hurt me, but instead she said that it could ruin the slide.

Liam started out on the small slides, but ended up doing most of the larger slides too.

We went back and picked up everyone else, and went on a bunch of raft rides. I was very impressed by Liam being adventurous and doing them - some of them were pretty big. After we did all the rides, we ate lunch and then headed over to a “5-D” water ride/movie.

At this point, we got into an argument about what “5D” could mean - it must mean that its a 3D show but also moves and splashes water on you (but that seems to be mixing some of the 5 senses with dimensions). But the story of the show was about a city where pearl diving was the main source of income, but once the giant pearl was blown away during a big storm, things went downhill for the town. So a little girl went in search for it and with the help of a dolphin, a camel and a falcon, finds the pearl and returns it to the town square and everything went back to normal. Luckily, the story was in English with arabic subtitles, because it already didn’t make a lot of sense.

As she went into the sea or the oasis, water would burst out at us. And it was generally an uncomfortable experience - water would get in your eyes and it was cold in the room making everyone cold But it was an experience, so there’s that. The best thing about the ride was that it turns out that this was where all of the characters in the park came from, so the theming made a bit more sense.

After that, Liam and I went to the wave pool, went back on some tube rides and then a splash area.

Liam had a great time at the splash area.

I was able to convince Liam to get splashed.

But he would only stand under the barrel, if I agreed to too.

Meanwhile, the girls either slept (Lily), read (Keira and Elenna) or trip planned (Megan) on their phones. We packed up and went back to the hotel. Megan and Keira went to the gym while Lily and I did some pushups and situps in our room. We had ordered acai bowls to be delivered the room.

We had a bit of a problem with the laundry where 4 of the 5 bags were delivered and the other one would be delivered by tomorrow. But since we were leaving early in the morning in 2 days, we were now worried that it wouldn’t be brought in time.

After that, we had arranged for Bugs Bunny to come to our room and deliver cookies and milk at 7pm. At 7, the hotel door bell range and we videoed Liam running to the door to open it and it was our last load of laundry being delivered. Then a few minutes later, Bugs arrived and Liam was excited.

After a false start, Buggs Bunny came and brought milk and cookies to the door.

After that, we watched How to Train Your Dragon 3, which the girls loved. It was also the first time that Liam didn’t fall asleep during a movie.

DAY 68

This was our last full day in the U.A.E. and we were going to Ferrari World. So you might wonder why would there be a Ferrari World in the U.A.E. We were in Abu Dhabi, but I looked it up and Dubai has the third most Ferraris in the world - with about 1 Ferrari for every two people in the city. Unfortunately, Keira wasn’t feeling well and had to stay home. Meanwhile, Lily had school work and stayed behind as well. We took the bus over there, and got there a couple of minutes before it opened.

As you can see, Ferrari World wasn't exactly packed.

Now, you might also be wondering what IS Ferrari World? Well, its a Ferrari themed, theme park. It has some good roller coasters and some kids rids and most of it is car related in some way, shape or form. Megan and I immediately went over to the roller coaster which was the fastest in the world. Unfortunately, it was closed - which was quite a disappointment. I think it is should be illegal to have the fastest roller coaster in the world and not operate it (although if its broken, then I guess I'm also against operating the fastest roller coaster in the world if its likely to kill me). So we moved on to the next few coasters, one of which was the tallest loop in the world - pretty good, although the loop didn't feel noticeably higher than say, the Incredicoaster in Disneyland. There were also a bunch of rides that Liam and Elenna would do, including a shooting ride about helping a rabbit win a car race against a badger.

Some of the Ferraris there has higher top speeds than others.

Like the other parks in the U.A.E., this one was pretty empty and there was only one time where we felt like the "fast pass" would have been useful. We went to 10 theme parks in the country, and didn't buy "fast passes" in any of them - which for a family of 6 probably saved us something like $3-$4k. Maybe it was the time of year (probably busier in the summer when people have off), but I can't imagine that people would be going to theme parks in 110 degree weather.

Ferrari World was solid, and might have rated a bit higher if the fastest coaster in the world was open. But after 4 hours we had done all we needed to (if we were car people, then we probably would have stayed longer) and went back to the WB park to do the Super Hero sections (Gotham City and Metropolis). By this time Lily had finished her work and met up with us.

I was obviously excited to meet Wonder Woman, and even better, no one fell asleep while we were taking pictures with her. I'm just now realizing that we shouldn't have taken Liam to a DC park in a Marvel t-shirt.

The rides were pretty good and the theming wasn’t bad, although I liked the theming of the kids sections we saw the first day there a bit better. We went on a 360 degree video show of Superman defending Metropolis and then a ride where the Justice League defeated Warlord. Liam had been talking about going to the play area he saw the first day we were there ever since we left, so he spent about 1.5 hours there while the rest of us went on coasters and big kid rides.

At this point, I’ll take a little time to talk about the characters at the hotel. The hotel did a pretty good job of almost always have a character around, but I found a couple of them were a little grabby. Liam was initially scared of Tom and Jerry and we finally got him to go over and then Jerry started tickling him, which was fine, but then kept doing it in a way to me felt like probably would have been a hard no at Disney. Then, another time we were buying a snack at the lobby shop and Tom and Jerry came over. There was a cake that looked like a slice of cheese (it was a type of cheesecake), and Jerry pointed to the cake. I said, “Oh Jerry wants the cheese.” Then Jerry grabbed my arm and pointed to the cake and then to his mouth. I kept saying, “Sorry, Jerry, we can’t get that for you.” And then it got awkward as he kept holding tightly to my arm and then pointing to his mouth. And this went on for what felt like 2-3 minutes of me trying to physically disengage and him not letting go. Afterwards, I only half joked that maybe Jerry was trying to tell me that he was being kept captive or they never fed him or something, because he was grabbing on so tightly.

I wasn't sure whether to file a police report on Jerry, or have the police look into whether Jerry was a victim of an international kidnapping ring.

Anyway, back to the day. Then we went back to the hotel and ordered food to the room and packed because we had to leave for the airport the next morning at 5:30 am.

DAY 69

I was set to get up at 4:30 in the morning to get ready, finish packing and then leave the hotel by 5:30, but at 3:30 in the morning I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep because we didn’t have visas for Oman. It has been my job to get them, and for whatever reason, the Oman website kept giving me errors, and saying that I hadn’t filled in all of the fields, even though I did. I tried 2 different devices, with 2 different browsers in 2 different countries hoping that there was some connection issue, but to no avail. The website said that you could get a visa at the Oman airport, but that seemed a bit last minute. The whole thing was compounded by the fact that we booked our hotel before we looked into the visa requirements - if you are a US citizen you don’t need a visa if you are staying for 14 days. Of course, we are staying for 15 days.

Before we left the WB hotel, we had one last thing to do - take a picture at the “Friends” couch in front of the fountain that was placed in front of the hotel. You have to take the picture at night to keep with the show, but it meant that the picture wasn’t that good. Meanwhile, since we took it first thing in the morning, the coach was wet (either with dew, a sprinkler, or with the fountain spray) so we didn’t get to pose on the couch. But definitely a neat addition to the hotel.

Keira took the picture, which was probably because she just woke up and still felt a little sick, but she is probably the biggest "Friends" fan of us.

Abu Dhabi airport was modern and the whole process was easy. Similar to how the amusement parks we visited were largely empty, so was the airport. Our flight was about 70% full, and at one point I looked up and down the plane and estimated that only about 5% of the people were not from the Middle East.

We got to the visa counter and the woman said, if its 14 days we don’t need a visa, so maybe 15 days is ok and we should ask the person at passport control. This seemed like weird advice, but we went over there anyway. The guy at the counter, said, no we needed a visa at 15 days, and when we said that the visa woman sent us over here because it might be ok, he asked the quard in the station next to him and they talked for a little while in arabic, and then they decided that we get 1 day grace period, so as long as we actually leave on the 15th day we will be fine. So we got our passports stamped with a visa for 14 days, so we will see if this bites us when we try to leave - one more thing to worry about the night before our next flight.

We got our bags and then had to wait a while for the car service that the Crowne Plaza set up for us to arrive. The resort is nice - it has a couple of pools, water slide, a water splash park, a giant inflatable slide, and a playground. Liam wanted to do it all and pretty much did the first day.

A pretty cool giant inflatable slide that looked like you were sliding down the belly of a shark.

The one thing he didn’t really want to do was the beach, which was beautiful.

Liam didn't want to go to the beach, but quickly made himself at home.

Since we were staying here two weeks, we wanted to live on the cheap, and that was why we got the 3 bedroom suite with a washer and stove. But that meant that we needed to go buy food, so I looked up a place that had a grocery store and other stores in it. We went to a mall and Megan was worried about being dressed appropriately so she wore the outfit that they made us buy at the mosque. I asked if I would be OK in shorts and she said long pants are always preferable but if you have shorts that go to the knees it might be ok, and then complained that men had it better. I wore shorts, but when we got there, I regretted it. Usually when we go anywhere touristy like a mall there are lots of people wearing shorts, etc, but here I think that I was the only one I saw wearing shorts for the 2 hours we were there.

Megan was looking for a bathing suit, and I went grocery shopping. Apparently, fashion is fashion everywhere, and they weren’t selling summer things right now, and instead were only selling sweaters. This is despite the fact that it still gets to high 80/low 90 degrees every day. So she struck out bathing suit shopping.

Meanwhile, the “Hypermarket” was nice. Big food selection - but also a bit like a Walmart with a furniture section, clothing section and electronics section. It also reminded me a lot of Walmart because it seemed to have its own knock off brand for things like pasta, cereal, etc. This was the first time that I couldn’t find Frosted Flakes at a supermarket that had a selection - but instead I found “Snowies” which had Bugs Bunny on it (the buffet at the hotel did have Frosties, so they are somewhere). We spent about $250, including buying some trucks for Liam to play with, and that was meant to last about a week given that the resort gives us free breakfast.

On the way there, there was a little difficulty getting a taxi - I had downloaded Otaxi, the local taxi app and then the driver messaged me and said that they don’t allow taxis on the property of the resort. So across the street from the resort was a parking lot with a few taxis in it, so we walked over there and got a taxi. The driver was very nice and tried to convince us that he could take us on a tour of the area. I was a little skeptical of this since his car wasn’t big enough and he seemed like he could get us there but likely not explain things as well as a guide could. When we got to the mall and I tried to pay him, he said to text him and he would pick us up and bring us back and we could pay him then. So I guess we were locked into him brining us back. He picked us up and brought us home and said he had a bigger car if we needed it. We'll see if we use him for anything.

We started to do some trip planning and after over an hour, Megan said it was cold and asked me to turn up the heat (almost every place we have stayed in with air conditioning has been too cold). When I got up and I touched the thermostat, I had to pause and ask myself “Where am I? What country is this? What hotel is this?" I got through almost 70 days of changing hotels and countries before this happened. I'm pretty proud of myself.