One night in Dubai

We spent an enjoyable 20 hours in Dubai. As we are in transit, we only have hand luggage until we reach our final destination, Colombo. We lurve travelling with only hand luggage. 

We fantasise that one day we will reach legendary "Jack Reacher" status and travel with only our passport and toothbrush. Although I'm not quite sure that we're ready for the 'four day' underpants just yet (fyi... that's frontwards, backwards, inside out-backwards and inside out-frontwards).

We stayed at the Copthorne airport hotel, courtesy of Emirates, plain but functional. Even though it was a delightful 36C, we were so delighted to be out of the Perth winter that we decided to walk to the metro. 

The train to Jebel Ali departs from the Jebel Ali platform.

A quick visit to Mall of the Emirates to discover that watching burkha and dish-dash clad skiers, at Ski Dubai really doesn't have the same charm the second time around and we were back on the metro to our old stomping ground, Bur Dubai.

We enjoyed a couple of cold ones at the Sheraton, then walked to The Gazebo, an Indian restaurant well known for it's signature dish of Hyderabadi Rice baked in a sealed clay pot. Gorgeous and well worth flying an extra 10 hours for! We ordered way tooooo much food and with shamed faces left half of it.

It was worth an extra 10 hour flight for this meal!

Hyderabadi biryani baked in a clay pot. 

Stuffed to the gills, we decided to walk back to the metro. All good and we were tucked up in bed by 9pm for our 5am flight to Colombo, albeit over tired, over heated and definitely overfed. 

It felt like 5 minutes later the phone alarm went off, 
so we groggily dragged ourselves out of bed and showered and dressed. I looked so frightful, I had to put some slap on to cover up my poor ravaged face! 

As we were about to leave the room, I looked at my watched and realized it had stopped, which was annoying, as I had just put in a new battery. I complained to Richie that my watch had stopped at 0055 and surprisingly he said that his had also stopped at 0055..........an amazing coincidence, an Emirati conspiracy? ...........no Richies phone alarm was still on Perth time and it was 1am not 5am. No wonder my poor face was so ravaged and sleep deprived. Face still full of slap, I gratefully fell back into bed for an extra few hours kip.

We're now on the flight to Colombo and its blissfully empty...... There is a God!