Dubai -Hatta

Day 40 - Dubai - Hatta

We have decided that the Hatta Fort Hotel is the nicest hotel we have stayed in on this trip.
It has a four star rating, but from our experience of many hotels on this trip, it would be five star plus.
Our room is just lovely with everything we need or want. We get chocolates at night, fruit during the day, fresh bottled water each day etc.
The staff are unfailingly polite and cheerful and ready to help at a moments notice. The staff will also stop and chat with us, which is so friendly and nice.
I must admit the moment they know that we are Kiwi’s, they want to talk about the rugby or cricket and the fact that we seem to lose a lot!!!!!!
One young man last night told us that he just loves the ‘Haka’ and the beautiful scenery we have in New Zealand. The scenery part is because of the Lord of the Rings.,
We have been asked a number of times on this trip if the scenery in the Lord of the Rings is real.

I have been thinking about what criteria makes a good hotel. I have come to the conclusion that it is the toilet paper!!!!!
We have had the most amazing array of toilet paper. The Hatta hotel comes out on top with the softest tissue. In Syria, WOW it was really dodgy. The toilet paper was like sandpaper!!!!! It was so rough.

We have had a lovely day today. We travelled back towards Dubai [Graham thinks we were briefly in Oman] to a number of sheds alongside the road that sold rugs. I had spied these sheds on the way through yesterday.
There must have been 10 big sheds all with an array of rugs. We stopped and sure enough we were besieged by salesmen wanting to sell us a rug.
We thought great we can do some bargaining [as Issa taught us in Jordan] so we said what we were looking for. We were thinking that we could play one salesman off against the other.
We were in for a rude awakening when we walked into the first shed, because it turned out that
all the sheds were inter - connected and it seemed owned by the same people!!
Suddenly our bargaining power went down a notch or two.
We did bargain a little and I believe we got the rug at a good price in comparison to the prices in Dubai.
The other funny thing was, when I asked the them ‘I guess the rug is made in India?’ yes Madam I was told. When we got back to the hotel room, I carefully laid my lovely silk rug out, to discover it is made in Belgium!!!!!!!!
So Belgium now makes silk rugs as well a lovely lace, beer, chocolates and ford cars.
I have taken a photo of the rug but because of the light in the room, the lovely colours don’t show up so well.

We walked up to a Fort and the view over Hatta looking towards mountains was lovely.

This afternoon we walked around the walking trail at the hotel. It was most interesting, but I have to say walking at home beats it hands down.
We do miss all the lovely greenery and bush of home.

This hotel also serves as a Convention Centre where they have all these wonderful bonding sessions. We saw the course where all the team building goes on.
We have one more day at this lovely hotel before we set out on our long journey for home.

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