Our "Free" Time in Dubai

OK, this will be the last blog post about our trip to Dubai. If after this, you haven't had enough...let me know what questions you still have about Dubai.

Anyway, in Dubai, S and I had prearranged a few different tours...the dinner cruise, the city tour, and the desert safari. Beyond this, the rest of the time we were free to do what we wanted.

Well as I believe I have mentioned in a previous post, Dubai has a lot of shopping malls. Even though we thoroughly enjoyed just walking around in the nice clean cool environment, I didn't necessarily want to spend our entire vacation doing this. So out comes the good old trusty tour book. What to do, what to see...these were the questions to be answered.

Being the big animal lover that I am, I'm always on the lookout for a zoo, an aquarium, or anywhere to go to see some animals. So in the tour book, I read about the Dubai Wildlife & Waterbird Sanctuary. Great! A place to potentially see some animals...probably only birds, but hey it would kill an hour or two. Plus, the guide book said admission was free. Even better.

Well, in our hotel room, there were also some tour magazines for Dubai. This place was listed in both magazines as well as being shown on the map of where it was located. So S and I head down to get a taxi. We get in...and I should have just known right away there were going to be problems. The taxi driver didn't know this place...we showed him the address and the map...still didn't know. He gets out to ask another taxi driver...nothing. He then asks the bellhop guy...nothing. Then he goes in the hotel and is gone for a really long time. I told S that we should just get out and find a different taxi. By this time, about 10 minutes have passed...finally the driver comes out of the hotel with the concierge. The concierge says that he doesn't know of this place either (still don't know why it is listed in all of these magazines and books if it is so unknown of a place) and that the address is wrong...plus it would be the wrong time of the year to see any birds. Funny thing, because just the day before we had been going to the desert safari and passed a huge body of water with a bunch of flamingos on it (which I was pretty sure was this same place).

Fine, I tell the concierge to just have the taxi driver take us to Dubai Festival City. He tells me that it is under construction. I tell him no, that it is open and that we would like to go. The taxi driver takes off and we drive and drive and drive and drive. I know that according to the map I had that we were going in the right direction to get to Dubai Festival City. However, I have the thought that the driver is taking us the long way because he even turns around at one point and we start going by things that we have already seen. Finally he says something about no exit to birds. I say to him we didn't want to go to the birds and that the concierge was suppose to tell him to take us to Dubai Festival City (which by the way is a mall and is located on the map next to where the bird sanctuary was suppose to be). He says that is a different place, and we tell him that yes we know it is different from the bird sanctuary and that is where we want to go. So finally after a long time, we arrive at this mall.

The taxi driver hops out of the car and rushes into the mall. S and I are like where is he going? S finally figures out that the guy is still trying to figure out how to get us to the bird sanctuary (which an hour before I had gave up on seeing when we left the hotel). Well we look at the meter to see what the tab is so far...over 100 dirhams...so we go in the mall after the taxi driver and hand him some money and just walk off. So, the hour taxi ride around Dubai to get to this mall costs right at $30 U.S. dollars.

This is when we decided that we needed to spend a lot of time in the mall before going back to the hotel. Our "free" time was starting to get a little expensive. So this was the day we ate our lunch in the bathroom. The concierge was correct...it was still under construction as the entire mall complex was not open yet...so I know he knew where I was requesting that he tell the taxi driver to take us. It was just the taxi driver who didn't understand. Ughh...talk about frustrating!

Anyway, S and I had a good time wondering around yet another mall. Finally though, we decided it was time to go back to the hotel...our fare back to the hotel...only $4 U.S. dollars!