Dubai

More photos here: http://dulceandkai.blogspot.com/

We arrived early, but our hotel room wasn't ready yet. We were so exhausted from not sleeping on the plane. As soon as we got our room, we just slept all day. We stayed at a 5 star hotel. It was so nice! A rooftop pool, gym, huge rooms, and a nice buffet breakfast. That night we went to the Dubai Mall. We had ticket to go to the top of Burj Khalifa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa), the tallest building in the world at 828 meters (2716 ft). It only took 1 minute in the elevator to get all the way to the top. The views were amazing, of course!
Afterwards, we went to see the huge aquarium in the mall with loads of fish, sharks and stingrays swimming around. We loved the food in Dubai! I found a great vegetable jalfrazi for dinner...just like how I remembered it in India. The next day we went to Open Beach. It was a beautiful, sunny day. We went all over the city - to Jumirah Mosque, Burj Al Arab (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Al_Arab), the Mall of the Emirates (with the indoor ski resort), Burj Khalifa - again :) and the Gold and Spice Souks (markets). The city was so big, and everything is so spread out. We normally like to walk everywhere, but it wasn't really possible here. We took taxis and the train everywhere.
When we checked in to the airport, the flight was full so the very nice ticketing guy upgraded us for free to business class! We were so excited!! We spent a couple of hours in the airport lounge before our flight. We got to see the New Year's fireworks on the TV. Mario even came in to say hi and have a beer with us.
We enjoyed Dubai - great sights and yummy food. But there were also bad things about it. Very difficult to find a beer, and no one talked to me, only to Kai. Women are just not considered equal here. We realised that we could never live here because of the cultural differences.