21 November -- Dubai, UAE

Monday, 21 November – Dubai, UAE. Our cruise was coming to an end, and it was now time to leave our home for the past 18 days.

We pulled into port in Dubai early this morning. It was nice to see a sign that welcomed us to their city. Our bags had been packed and set outside our room last night – green tag # 22. We were to meet for debarkation in the Schooner Lounge at 9:05 in the morning. As we looked from our verandah we saw a long line of taxicabs waiting for us – this was going to be easy.

The first view of the city’s skyline looked like most other big city skylines except for the one needle thrusting itself higher and higher above the other buildings. There was no mistake what that building was – THE tallest building in the world – Burj Khalifa. The interesting story we heard (in Abu Dhabi) is that the builder was running out of money to complete the building. When it was finally done, and it came time to open the building and name it, the name came as a surprise – it was named for a powerful person in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, meaning that this person had “provided” the money to complete the building.

After breakfast and waiting for #22 to be called, we left the ship, found our luggage – but the orderly line of taxis was not to be found. The line seemed to move to where ever someone would walk to for a taxi, not great system. We envisioned a several-hour wait for a taxi. We saw our Swedish friends Kurt and Camilla who were in the same situation; but they had a plan (leave it to the Swedes; I am 50% Swedish, by the way!). Their idea was to take the FREE shuttle bus to the outlet mall and then get a taxi from there; there are always plenty of taxis at shopping malls – right?

Perhaps our first clue should have been that we were the only ones on the FREE bus to the outlet mall. After all, why would anyone get off a cruise ship and head straight to the outlet mall? I don’t know, but we were doing it.  The good news is that we weren’t in the ever-changing line for the taxis, and we were now out of the port area. We had maps and we were able to monitor our “progress” – for a while, anyway. It’s hard to monitor progress on a map when you are no longer on the map! More good news – at least it was four of us in this mess together.

We finally get to the outlet mall, somewhere between Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Outer Mongolia. But Kurt and Camilla were right; we caught a taxi in two minutes and we were headed back toward town. Twenty US Dollars later, Darlene and I arrived at our hotel, the One and Only Royal Mirage. The camels in front of the hotel entrance are a reminder of how we felt once we arrived – “We finally made it here!”

Even though we’d politely asked for an early check-in, that didn’t happen. In fact, the standard 2 PM check-in didn’t happen for us until 2:45, meaning we had lots of time to sit around the lobby, have an extravagantly priced lunch, and sit around some more while we “patiently” waited for our room to be ready. The only benefit of waiting in the lobby was the use of the free wi-fi – it was $30 a day in the room to use it. I just waited until I was going to the lobby; that’s partially why a few of my blog entries were delayed. We had dinner in the Olives Restaurant. We didn’t realize it was a buffet, but we were able to order from the menu; whew!