Not A Great Start

This morning I leapt out of bed at 0550hrs to begin the new me, threw on my gym kit, grabbed a bottle of water and set off for the gym.  The only thing I forgot to do was see what time it opened………..which was 8.  So by 5 past 6 I was back in my room, wide awake and wondering what to do with myself !

Thanks God for the internet (and believe me there’s no problem with bandwidth at 6 in the morning !).  I got my blog uploaded, but I hadn’t sorted out any photos so apologies for that – I’ve just done some for the last couple of days, here’s one I prepared earlier……..

This was just after breakfast this morning and as far as I can remember it’s the first time I’ve seen camels through the arch !

Right, back to the plot.  In no particular order over the next few days I’ll try and fill you in on some of the sights and sounds that we have experienced.  Today will be about Dubai and more particularly the Burg Khalifa.  You have all see pictures of it from some of my previous visits to Dubai but there are a couple I think are worthy of this trip. 

As you know the BK is the tallest building in the world (and as an aside some mental French bloke climbed up the outside of it recently – took him 6 and a half hours.) and as you may remember the viewing platform is only on the 124^th floor (out of over 200 apparently) but the view is quite good if you look straight down………

The pattern you can see in the water is the Dubai Fountain as it’s known and every night for 5 minutes every half an hour it puts on a display to music which is like watching fireworks it’s so spectacular.  We went back after dark specifically to watch it and then went and had dinner over looking it and saw it at least 3 more times – thoroughly recommended (spelling thoroughly then took some guess work to get the spell checker to even get close !).  I do have one or two pictures but they don’t really show the scale of the whole thing so I may have to go back for another go !

What I did get was quite a good picture of the BK at night……

Well, I like it anyway (I haven’t really mastered the whole picture at night thing yet – I took about 10 of this, all on different settings and most of them look the same to me !  At least I’ve stopped them looking to bright.  I’ll try and get some advice from a reader and try again when I go back to the fountains…….I wouldn’t hold your breath because it might be some time !)

That was all a bit eclectic really but it should wet the appetite and get us all rolling again because I realise that now I’ve neglected you, I may never get you back…….(sob sob).  Talking of appetite I promised you an inventory:

Money:  AED 10 for 2 falafels and two cans of drink (I took the HR SME out for lunch to discuss some work things and we went mad and sat outside instead of getting a take-away.  He insisted on driving because he didn’t want to walk so I got my own back by making him sit in the sun !)

Cigars:  Tracey kindly brought me some from Duty Free and whilst they aren’t exactly what I asked for they have probably led to me smoking less in quantity because they’re not as big and nowhere near as nice as my favourites.  It’s a little difficult to put a figure on what I smoke so I think unless I give up or am able to go back to my big ones then I may drop this section.

Gym:  As I said at the beginning, the gym thing got off to a poor start due to incompetent planning (or lack of planning)  I will have to reserve my morning circuit training for the weekend and satisfy myself that I did an hour and 13 minutes cycling with Phyco this evening (I help my own for a change – although I’m going circuit training with her tomorrow night so the bravado may all come crashing down !

Food:  Scrambled eggs, baked beans, grilled tomatoes and apple juice for breakfast, a falafel for lunch, an orange and a oaty biscuity thingy for tea and chicken curry veg and salad for dinner (and a piece of flat bread), oh, and melon and orange for pudding.  The restaurant was full of bloody footballers complaining that people weren’t running around fast enough for them but they all go tomorrow morning so life might return to some level of normality (and I might get a decent room again !) – I hate bloody footballers !

Anyway – that’s your lot for today, and unless anything more interesting comes up, tomorrow we will be discussing the art of haggling (if you want to do some home work just type “this bloke won’t haggle” into YouTube !)

Night night.