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Published: October 15th 2022
The one who knocks at the door gets the answer… ~ Emirati Proverb
HE SAID... We touched down at
Dubai International Airport around 5:30am and trundled into Terminal 3. I couldn’t believe how vast, clean, spacious and quiet the terminal was. It was almost unnaturally quiet. It was only after a few minutes that I noticed the signs that said it was a ‘Silent Terminal’, with no flight or passenger announcements. It was so incredibly peaceful. We literally breezed through customs. As we walked to the baggage carousel, we couldn’t believe what greeted us. Our packs were side-by-side, slowly making their way towards us. With all the hype about lost luggage over the past few months – especially on Qantas flights – we were expecting something to go wrong. We shouldn’t have worried. It was if our packs had stayed together the whole trip, like Ren and I sitting beside each other on the flight. 😊
We headed straight out into Dubai’s early morning heat, and it was a relief to get into a taxi with air conditioning. We made our way to Ralph and Ruthanne’s place in Arabian Ranches, and there was barely any traffic on the road. It was still very early.
I was amazed by this desert city.
Rising up out of the sand were monumental structures, towering towards the sky. Some were immaculately finished, others still under construction, while others had been abandoned mid-build, jutting out of the sand like trunkless legs of stone.
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair. With the Dubai desert around us, I couldn’t help but make the Ozymandias connection. 😊
Arabian Ranches is a bit of a labyrinth for the uninitiated, and our taxi driver got a little bit lost on the way. However, it wasn’t long before we pulled up outside Ralph and Ruthanne’s spacious townhouse in an expansive residential neighbourhood surrounded by desert sand. It was fantastic to see them. Truly so. We’d bid them farewell months earlier during the Christmas holidays when they were preparing to move from Australia to Dubai, and here we were nine months later – half a world away from our last face-to-face catchup in Melbourne.
We dropped our packs, freshened up and headed out for a coffee with Ralph at a nearby shopping centre. On our return, I embarked on a Lego adventure with the youngest of Ralph and Ruthanne’s boys. It was a challenge, but I loved it. There’s
nothing quite like following an instruction booklet to build a Lamborghini, and getting beaten hands down by an eight-year-old. 😊
Ralph cooked us pancakes with eggs and bacon – far out, what a welcome. I’d had breakfast a few hours earlier on the plane, but it was so nice to sit at a table. In the early afternoon we headed to ‘Atlantis, The Palm’, Ralph’s new workplace. Perched on the edge of the Persian Gulf, the place is an extraordinary feat of engineering, and it was great to see where Ralph now spends his days. We were there for lunch at Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Bread Street Kitchen and Bar’. The place was popular and the meals were great. We shared a Caesar salad and the Sunday roast special, and they certainly didn’t hold back on portion sizes.
Ralph took us on a tour of the events and functions area he manages at ‘Atlantis, The Palm’, then drove us a short distance along the edge of the Persian Gulf to the futuristic ‘Atlantis, The Royal’ (which resembled a Lego design by Salvador Dali). In the mid-afternoon we made our way back to Arabian Ranches and settled there for the rest
of the day. I continued the Lego build with my young nephew, then enjoyed Ralph’s homemade chicken curry and dahl – both of which were amazing. We started on champagne, moved to rosé and finished the night with a great pinot noir.
It had been a long day on the back of a long flight, and we were starting to feel very weary. We retired into the comfiest of beds for our one and only night in Dubai. I woke at 3am and put the finishing touches on a report I’d been working on since leaving Tasmania. After a final edit, I attached it to an email and sent it on its digital journey back to Australia. What a relief! I was finally on holiday.
We sat outside in the warm Dubai air and enjoyed a cup of tea before venturing out to the local golf club for breakfast. I opted for the granola with Greek yogurt and fresh blackberries, strawberries and raspberries. It was so refreshing. We walked around the complex for a few minutes, then headed back to the house. I desperately tried to complete the Lego Lamborghini build, but I didn’t quite make it. I
left it in the capable hands of my older nephew, who I knew would finish it in no time at all – and ten times faster than me!
After saying our goodbyes, we jumped into an Uber at midday and headed to Dubai International Airport. In much the same vein as the previous day, we breezed through Terminal 3 with ease, and we absolutely soaked up the silence. Where else in the world can you stand in the middle of a vast airport and not be plagued by constant annoying announcements? It took us a matter of minutes to check-in, walk through security and make our way to the gate lounge. We made use of the free Wi-Fi to check email before boarding the plane (on time) and lifting off at 4:30pm. We were on our way to Athens. Our Greek adventure had officially begun!
SHE SAID... We landed at
Dubai International Airport feeling very relaxed and happy – Andrew had made large strides towards finishing the project report he had been writing at both airports and on both planes; we were finally on holiday; we were in a ‘new’ country; and most importantly – we
were seeing my brother Ralph, Ruthanne, and the boys!
Dubai Airport is a huge airport and supposedly the world’s busiest airport as measured by international passenger traffic. We had to catch a train from our gate to immigration, but everything was extremely smooth sailing and we exited rather quickly. This may have been partly due to arriving at 5:30am on a Sunday.
In light of all the media coverage of the recent mayhem with luggage being lost and delayed, we had been concerned about our luggage making all the right connections and arriving in Dubai with us. We needn’t have worried. As we walked towards the baggage carousel, we saw our two packs bobbing along together as they made their way around. In all our years of travelling together, we have never had our luggage arrive together on the carousel. 😊
We walked out into the 38-degree early morning heat and caught a taxi to Ralph and Ruthanne’s house in the Arabian Ranches community. After getting lost for about 30 minutes, our driver finally found her way to the correct address and we were greeted with relief and much joy! I’m sure my brother was worried we’d
got lost in the desert. 😊
It was so good to be able to spend some time with Ralph, Ruthanne and the boys in their beautiful new home. After a tour of the house, it was so so so nice to be served a good cup of tea and fed Ralph’s delicious pancakes while we caught up on all the news of their moving and settling into life in Dubai.
After a quick shower, we had a tour of the shops and cafes in the local community. A well-known fact about Dubai is that it runs on an army of expatriates. As with other middle eastern countries we’ve transited through, I noticed this obvious fact in the airport – with the only locals being the immigration staff (I think). And as we sat down to a coffee at Hamptons Cafe (a somewhat plush set up), I detected at least four different accents among the staff.
Not long after that, Ruthanne and Ralph treated us to lunch at Atlantis, The Palm. This is Ralph’s new workplace, and while his area is Functions and Events, it was lovely to experience the restaurants in the complex too. We had the
famous Sunday roast at Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant, with an amazing homemade ginger lemonade and cocktails. We were so full after the very generously sized meal and drinks that I could hardly fit in the tiramisu dessert, much less even taste the amazing looking chocolate lava pudding that also arrived at the table.
We enjoyed a walk around the plush Atlantis complex afterwards, checking out the ballrooms and other areas used for the mega events that Ralph’s team manages. Whenever I’ve been in Ralph’s places of work, I get flashbacks to when I used to visit my parents in the schools they used to teach. The respect the students and other teachers had for them automatically flowed over to me as a family member. It was the same here, and it has been every other time we’ve visited Ralph – in Malaysia, and the numerous hotel and restaurant complexes he worked at in Australia.
On the way back home, we drove past Ralph’s next project – a new hotel that he’ll be shortly moving his focus to. Atlantis, The Royal is still in the concluding stages of construction, and it will be opening soon. This hotel has a very
futuristic / modern design, especially when compared to the somewhat more traditional architecture of The Palm down the road. It also sits very eye-catchingly right on the Persian Gulf.
Our drive through the city of Dubai showcased the amazing architecture in the city. I recognised many of the iconic buildings despite never being in Dubai before. It’s even more impressive and mindboggling when you realise that the UAE is such a young country, and the land we were on was either reclaimed from the desert or from the sea!
Back home, we relaxed into the evening with champagne to celebrate my birthday! It was very special to have the first of my big birthday celebrations with Ruthanne, Ralph and the boys. And later we enjoyed a delicious dinner of Ralph’s rice and curries. Ralph has voluntarily taken on the mantle of preserving our family’s recipes, making a distinction between Mum and Dad’s way of cooking and his ‘next gen’ spin on things. We very much enjoyed the chicken curry, dahl and chutneys. Our best times with Ruthanne and Ralph have always been around a table, sharing food and wine and chatting about life. And this time was no
different. They are amazing hosts, and so many laughs were had – as usual. 😄
We had a relatively early night by local time standards (10pm), because we were shattered from the flight the night before and the 7-hour difference with Australian time. After a good night’s sleep, it was so glorious to wake up and have a cup of tea outside in the back garden – in an already very warm day! The garden, very exotically (for me), has tropical plants and backs onto a sand dune! After the winter weather we’d just had at home, I honestly couldn’t get enough of that beautiful warm morning.
Sadly, our very quick stopover was coming to an end later in the day. However, we still had half a day together, and Ruthanne and Ralph took us to breakfast at the community’s golf club. I had a delicious mushroom and truffle omelette, and Andrew had granola with Greek yoghurt and berries.
Afterwards, we relaxed at home for the rest of the morning before we had to leave for the airport. Andrew and our younger nephew had been engaged in a Lego building competition, and Andrew was trying desperately to
finish the car he had been working on. Let me set the scene… our nephews have been building with Lego since they were babies, and Andrew hadn’t touched any such building blocks for many decades! So, it really wasn’t surprising that our young nephew (with crucial help from his older brother) finished his car first and won the competition. 😊
In the early afternoon we made our way to the airport after a quick lunch. Check-in at the Dubai International Airport was as painless as our arrival processes had been 36 or so hours earlier. With the entirety of Terminal 3 dedicated to Emirates flights (as well as Fly Dubai, their subsidiary budget airline), we could check in at any counter. We have never seen this at any other airport before.
We caught a train to our gate, and because we’d allowed quite a bit of time for checking-in, we spent the rest of our time looking around the terminal. I love looking at souvenirs in the gift shops at airports, as I find they give a good sense of how the country sees itself and/or how it would like to market itself. There was a lot of
desert culture and tea drinking memorabilia, and the small Arab ‘babushka’ nesting dolls we found were cute and quirky. However, the very large brass camel you could sit on (for sale at US$16,000) was a bit of a shock! Who would buy an almost life size camel as an impulse-buy at an airport? 😊
Having praised the Dubai Airport we’d experienced until this point; I feel I have to add that the ‘A Concourse’ gates we were leaving from must have been in an older part of the terminal. The layout of the gates, the shops, and most importantly the toilets, were well below the standards of the rest of the airport we’d seen so far (on arrival and at check-in).
As we sat at our gate, I reflected on how sad we were to be leaving Dubai so quickly. We would have loved to have spent more time here, but it just didn’t suit our last-minute travel dates, or the work schedules and school timetables for Ruthanne, Ralph and the boys.
We were genuinely impressed with how well the whole family had settled into work and school life in Dubai after just a few months. Our
next trip over will definitely have to be much longer so we can see more sights, get to know the local culture and explore further afield. And by then Ruthanne, Ralph and the boys will virtually be locals. 😊
See you in Athens!
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DaveandIssy
Dave and Issy Sheehan
Dubai
Probably not our favourite place in the world, although I’m sure it’s much more enjoyable when you get to spend the time with friends.. and build Lego cars. It was 50 degrees when we were there which probably didn’t help. Serves us right for turning up in July I guess. Looking forward to reading about Greece!