This morning we headed to Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Using a couple of the maps that were available we managed to get there no problem. Unfortunately, finding the parking was not so straight forward. We tried twice to get through the main gate, but were refused. It is very clear from the amount of various visible security that they are pretty worried about terrorism. We eventually found the smallest entry of all of them that led out into a huge car park that was still nearly empty at 9.30 in the morning. The mosque is a very grand elaborate building and can be seen from a long distance away. We knew that the dress code was very strict, but also know that they gave out abaya´s to borrow. Theresa decided that a black abaya would not ... read more

Sunday in Dubai is a normal working day, so we are expecting everywhere to be a lot quieter today. We had planned that our first visit today was a tour around the only mosque in Dubai that we are allowed into. Unfortunately, we have slightly misunderstood where we were to go. Before our visit to Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding yesterday, we knew exactly where we had to go. Unfortunately, whilst we were there yesterday they gave us a map with a mosque on it. However, there are many many mosques here. We assumed that this was in fact the mosque that did visits as it was the centre that organised them. We arrived at Al Fahidi metro station about 9am, and thinking that we only had a ten minute walk for our 10 am ... read more

When we were conducting our research for this holiday, we heard about the book of entertainer Vouchers. For Dubai this is actually two books full of buy one get one free vouchers for restaurants, attractions and other items. For the book, the price was £88.00. This came with a complementary Travel book, which we have also managed to use for a good hotel in Abu Dhabi. As most of the hotels are 5 or 4 stars, they work out too expensive for the other areas we are staying in. In United Arab Emirates (UAE) the weekend is Friday and Saturday. Friday is prayer day, so not a lot happens. The souks (local shopping centres) and any government buildings are shut. The metro underground remains closed until early afternoon too. As we had a long day travelling ... read more

We started the day off well with a very hearty breakfast bought as part of the meal deal last night. Think we have had good value for money out of this. We will be doing this again. With our original plans, we flew into Gatwick with EasyJet and then out of Heathrow with Emirates. We thought it would be more relaxing to take the bus between the two. So we caught a National Express bus from Gatwick to Heathrow and then a National Express Hoppa to one of the Premier Inns where we will sleep tonight. The National Express organiser at Gatwick Airport managed to get us onto an earlier bus, as we were early, as normal. We are always early or on time and never late. We now have time to relax and do a ... read more

Our original plans were to start our holiday on Tuesday 8thSeptember, but George´s Mum sadly passed away last week, and we needed to be in England for the funeral tomorrow. The flights for our travel today have been extortionately expensive, so we are going to stay with Theresa´s sister until our planned start time, rather than trying to travel back home again. Our original flight on the 8th September was from Tenerife to London Gatwick, but all planes on that route were fully booked for today, so we flew Tenerife South to Birmingham instead using Monarch. We have not flown Monarch for many years and were both impressed with how clean and spacious the plane looked. Unfortunately, after being up in the air for just a few minutes the pilot spoke to the customers to advise ... read more