Day 1, Tuesday - The Dubai Mall

With only four short hours of sleep (Big Buddy got up at 5am) we began our day. Breakfast in Dubai is fantastic! Fresh fruit, eggs, and pastries galore. One thing to note, the eggs here are different. The yokes are orange orange instead of yellow. Very tasty.

Etisalat is where everyone gets their phone service in Dubai.

There are 4 levels to this mall. Ice skating rink in Dubai. Wow!

Largest big screen I have ever seen.

My iPhone stopped wanting to work after our flight over here. So our main missions for today were to get me a local cell phone so Kevin and I can be in contact, look for a car seat, and a place to live. First stop, the Dubai Mall. Now I have heard things about this mall, it is one if not the largest mall in the world. We figured we should be able to find anything we need here. What an experience...going to the mall is an event over here. Women and men dress up to the nines to go to the mall. I wondered why this is until I got here. Besides the fact that Mr. Big, Big Buddy and myself all looked like homeless people in comparison (wait, we are homeless) we noticed that the most famous designers, fashions, and most expensive everything is at the Dubai mall. Did I mention that they have an Ice skating rink in the middle of it? Wow, this along with the largest flat screen tv I have ever seen (several stories high and wide). And gold everything. They have "The Gold Souk" which are a bunch of little shops that each deal in gold. I definitely want to go back here and spend some more time. Now after awhile, Mr. Big and I found the Local Cell phone company for all of Dubai. I was able to get myself a little Nokia (yikes, I really miss my iPhone). Big Buddy and I had our first Italian Gelato ever...wow! I am in love with gelato. Regular old ice cream will never be the same for me. Big Buddy and I were fitted for our traditional Muslim garb. He a white shirt with white crocheted cap and I the traditional black burka with a couple of beautiful scarves. Although, I feel like the burka is a way to control women and their rights, I have to admit, there seems to be something sexy about this outfit. The younger women in Dubai, are starting to dress up their burka's with jewels of all sorts. Bling as we know it. They also dress themselves up with the most expensive purse and shoes you have ever seen. Can you say "Millano Blancs", "Versace", etc.

The Gold Souk is amazing!

With phone in hand, and no car seats in site, we must of walked over our 10,000 steps for the day. The three of us were exhausted! We returned to our hotel and began searching for our new place to live. We had our eye on a couple of places that we had researched on the net and started calling to set up appointments for the next day. The three of us retired to bed by 7pm and of course we were up by 5am again. ;)

It is typical to turn the corner and see something amazing!

Also typical to see gentlemen sitting around.

We did wake up at 1am and decided to go out for an adventure. Turns out that there are more people out at 1am then during the middle of the day. Very strange. This sort of reminded me of Las Vegas. We stopped at a convenient store and it was fun to see all of the snack food in Arabic.