22.2 - Beach, Burj Al Arab and swimming

This was one short night. Due to our long discussion and catch-up session last night, got only about 6h of sleep. Oh well :)

Camping over at Jaana's place. She is sharing a nice big apartment with another co-worker. View is quite beautiful, could see the sea and Burj Al-Arab from living room balcony only IF the visibility would be better. At least the sun still shines in this town, not like in Bangkok.

More apple cake for breakfast and off to the beach we go. It was a nice walk through local neighbourhood. Dust is everywhere around here - Dubai is a total desert city. Only green patches are by hotels or public parks, and in the parks they have an entrance fee by the way.

Layed on the beach and got the first sun overdose :) We must have been in the sun for about 1.5 hours or so. I guess I did not do a very good job with applying sunscreen :) I got finger marks on my back and my legs are burned :D But it was so nice to feel the heat, themperature must be close to 30C here - so incredibly wonderful!

Visited Mercato which is famous Renaissance-themed shopping mall, it featured all the wonderful shops like GAP, Laura Ashley and Laura Ashley Home, Promode, Virgin records and so on.

Getting back from Mercato was a bit of a hassle. It is located on one of the main roads here - Jumeirah road. Hassle was because of the bus traffic here, it is very anti-touristy since you can't buy tickets in the bus, you need the buscard, which I did not have :( After 45 minutes of trying to get on a bus, me and one other lady (from Kazhastan) ended up catching a cab to get down the road. Stopped by Burj Al-Arab Hotel - trademark of Dubai. As Wikitravel writes it is famed for being the first seven-star hotel in the world (technically a five star deluxe hotel), this striking sail-shaped building is a symbol of Dubai and one of the most opulent hotels in the world.

By the hotel there is Madinat center - I'd name it a little Venice :) It has canals between the houses where gondolas take people around. There are lots of little shops and restaurants and the whole place is quite nice. Since no-one is allowed to go to the Burj Al-Arab hotel area then from Medinat center one gets a beautiful view :)

In the evening Jaana took me along to the swim practices that she joins here once in a while - that was fun :) The coach is from UK, former swimmer, and trains about 30 master swimmers here. Quick warmup and then 25-125m splits with various speeds, last bit was 2x100 all out. So basically, quite intense training. Whole practice lasted an hour. Dragged ourselves back home and were soo happy to go straight to bed.

Thank you all for the numerous birthday wishes :)