The last few days flashed by very fast indeed

Well suddenly the days were flying by and the last two days were spent mostly like previous days by a good morning breakfast buffet, followed by several hours of reading or swimming and then a light lunch followed by yet more sunning oneself and reading etc and finally dinner. On Friday night we tried the seafood buffet which was excellent with great choice of prawns, lobster and many different kinds of fish prepared in all manner of ways. A really nice evening indeed.

Suddenly Sunday arrived and we had to get up at 0530 (0230 UK time) and be ready to leave the Hotel and with a minimum check in time of two hours, of course there might be a stranded tourist waiting to take our seats. Check in was fast and efficient and then we went to Costa Coffee shop for a light breakfast and then on board for a seven hour flight.

The flight was choc a bloc with people unlike our flight to Dubai which was pretty empty. As usual with Airports they seem to think that big is beautiful and of course you end up walking miles, going up escalators and then down escalators and then riding on little trains. Oh for small airports.

We arrived home in Weybridge just in time to see the start of the Chelsea vs Stoke City game which Chelsea won in great style with a win of seven goals to nil.

It was nice to go to ones own bed again and without the sound of air conditioner or the very noisy birds, including peacocks, in Dubai.

This was a lovely trip for both of us to enjoy the warm sun and take it easy for a while.Now we start work on all the usual things that you do at home with gardening, doing paperwork and the Land Cruiser needing a MOT and service and road taxing over the next week, a quite expensive business now

Well thats it for the Dubai trip and ther next one will be with the caravan to france later in the year.

22nd April- And the sun still shines

Another really beautiful day with the temperature around 33 degrees Centigrade and very low humidity which makes for great weather to relax in.
The usual day just hangin' out on the beach, lunch in the beach bar and we have noticed that the number of guests in the Hotel is starting to shrink as people are being repatriated.

We decided to have a change this evening and went to the local mall called Ibn Battuta Mall and there is about 275 shops and 50 restaurants and many stand alone stalls selling everything from plastic slip on shoes to i-Pad's. You can also buy a motorcycle or a stuffed toy horse, the range is amazing, see link for more info http://www.ibnbattutamall.com/
We decided to have dinner in Tony Roma's who serve good steak and ribs, here they serve beef ribs and not pork, I wonder why. You can only get alcohol in Hotel restaurants in Dubai and not in any other outlet and to purchase booze you have to register at an government controlled outlet and provide ID each time you purchase anything. So most locals go to the Hotels restaurants for entertainment but you have to remember that there is a 'ZERO' approach to drinking and driving in this town. One glass and you are over the limit and if caught jail beckons and so Taxis do a roaring trade as do the companies who will send along a driver to take you and your car home. One silly western lady, a visitor to Dubai, this week drank to much booze and went to the police to say she had been raped and was promptly arrested for being drunk.
There has been chaos at Dubai Airport over the last couple of days and thousand of tourists are hoping for a flight to get home. Emirates have started using Airbus 380's to Europe in place of the smaller aircraft just to get people home. BA now appears to be operating to Dubai normally again with 2 flights per day and tomorrow we shall find out if we are to fly or not.
Just prior to going to bed we watched some of the great debate with the three party leaders giving their all. Brown was terrible in my view whilst Cameron was appearing to have difficulty keeping his temper with what Brown was saying. The Libdem leader also put on a good performance but this is easy when you you know the questions in advance and have time to practise the answers. We only watched about 20 minutes of the event and its so staged as almost to be pointless. I would love to see them in the boxing ring together and then lets so who wins. The clean Mr Clegg is now getting covered with tar from many sources about his personal expense claims, three kitchens in 18 months, flying on the cheapest airline to Brussels then claiming full fare BA prices,they all ought to be hung drawn and quartered the lot of them.
The reform I would like to see is the number of members being reduced radically to say a maximum of say 50 or alternatively one per county and then pay them a lot more but overall costs would go down and no stupid expenses like the past. There is no chance that a decent government with so many people with different personal interests will ever help the people of this country. If I wasn't going out in the caravan later this year I had seriously thought of standing for PM,

Wednesday 21st April- Noel escapes to Dubai downtown

The sun was shining as we got up this morning, Oh No not again they cried, not another day in heaven..But no ,as Noel has decided to meet some business colleagues he has known for many years who are now stationed in Dubai.
Jennifer for a complete change, hit the beach and had an easy day whilst Noel headed in to town to meet an ex colleague in the Chinese Restaurant in the Airport Meridian Hotel and a jolly nice lunch and chat it was too. So at about 3 pm Noel headed off to the office in his colleagues brand new Porsche and met some old acquaintances and then got a lift to the Metro and took the train back to near Jebel Ali and then a Taxi ride back to the Hotel.
It was really great to see these old friends again and talk about old business times and that retirement if planned correctly is extremely good and as we enjoy travel that's what we do when we can.
Dubai is stepping its actions against bad driving and those that do not register their car or pay fines and so from this week for the next few weeks just about everybody in the police force is out booking people like crazy and impounding cars with overdue penalties or just not insured or registered. At the time this helps them find illegal immigrants who they then kick out of the country and I understand that over 10000 people have been asked to leave ( well forced on to a plane actually) and sent back to join their ancestors in the last 6 months. Perhaps something similar could be good
The evening was spent having a walk around the garden and a light dinner and of course a glass of wine to wash it down and then back to the Hotel Lobby to read today's UK newspapers. They are sent electronically to the Hotel who then print off several copies and they are on the lobby desk in time for breakfast usually. Not bad really.
Emirates Airlines currently has 5000 passengers in Hotels in Dubai at the moment who are receiving three meals a day paid for by the Airline. Having seen the paper of some people misfortunes sounds like a good carrier to be on. Etihad in Abu Dhabi has about 2500 people they are also looking after. I also understand that many Hotels in Dubai are quite full but when you consider the amount of stranded passengers its not suprising really.
We are both in too good books at the moment and so the last hour, prior to a sleeping , we read for a while

Tuesday 20th April- A hard day at the BEACH office

Its a hard life but somebody has to do it, just lying around in the sun all day with the occasional swim and a periodic walk about and then an exhausting trip of 25 yards to the beach bar restaurant and and then an even more exhausting 25 yards back where you slump in to the chair and nod off.This type of work is not everybody cup of tea but we somehow make do.A pleasant day was had by all and then in the evening a trip to the Sports bar for a light dinner and a glass of wine and then back to the Hotel for some light reading and catch up on the airline confusion. Well done the British Government for wrecking peoples travel plans without even looking in to the matter they just stopped the planes flying. The boss of the CAA is one other than the ex boss of train company which services the West Country and this line had the worst record of any train company. So actually its not a surprise that this happened and the Airlines are really fed up with this stupid decision which was taken without any investigation in to the matter. It must be Gordon Browns fault really as its the type of thing he would do , that and selling all our gold at the lowest price know to man beast and flock of pigeons

An easy day and a good night out

The usual sort of early to late buffet breakfast before heading out to the beach. It can be really hard work some times just sitting in the shade on a conformable chair under the shade of the sun umbrellas and palm trees. The cooling wind helps it seem a comfortable temperature and today it was about 36 degrees C and the swimming pool around 29 degrees C.


Night time view downtown Dubai


There are still quite a few people around the Hotel and you can hear groups of them discussing their challenges by not going home on time from running out of razor blades to not enough Blood pressure pills and that they actually had to wash some undies in the sink. These people should be stuck somewhere in Africa or India and then you would really have something to complain about.

On the left the tallest building in the world

A snack lunch in the beach side bar was endured by us and then an exhausting afternoon lying in the garden. At around 8pm an old business colleague of mine who used to work in New York has now arrived to work in Dubai two months ago and so he arrived at the Hotel and we headed downtown to the Italian Restaurant at the Westin Hotel on the beach. We had a great meal sitting outside on the terrace in a lovely climate and eventually returned to the Jebel Ali resort at around 1230, A very nice day and an even better night out..



The Italian restaurant at the Westin

Right on the Button- McLaren

An easy morning and a slow breakfast before wandering over to the Sport's Bar to watch the Formula 1 Race from China. A good race and with quite a few changes due to rain, safety car and a couple of accidents. McLaren got the strategy correct whilst Red Bull got it wrong and so there was a First and Second for McLaren with Jensen winning and Hamilton coming second but there may be a stewards enquiry on one aspect of his performance. A good race anyway for the Woking team.
As time was getting on we decided to have lunch here and Noel had the 'English fish and chips with mushy peas and Jennifer the Hammour local fish with rice and very tasty it all was.
The an afternoon spent under the unrella and staring at the swaying palm trees and the blue sky and then heading for a nice refreshing swim in one of the five pools.
Neither of us was really hungey in the evening after a big lunch and so some fruit and a drink by the sea in the 'Captains Bar' was the order of the day and looking at the lights in the dinstance.
Noel has made contact with some old buisness contacts and so tomorrow night we shall join them for dinner and general talk about current and past times.
This volcano things drags on and we hope by the weekend it will be sorted one way or another otherwise Noel will start looking for a consulting job down here to while away the time waiting for a flight. We are not panicking yet, as they say Mr Manwering, but we need to be aware of whats happening to ensure that we dont get stuck here to long. I guess time will tell.
We will also start taking a few photos soon to adorn the blog.

The Good and the Ugly

Well first of all I have resolved the foreign Language challenges on the Blog, thank heavens as I was beginning to think it was too much wine.
Anyway, I discovered, much to my annoyance that I had forgotten to pack my anti gout pills, everything else I had got almost right but forgot the allopurinol and so following a request to my daughter the previous day I have now a copy of the prescription which I hope will allow me to get some more pills.
Anyway, first thing after breakfast we headed to the beach for some sun which we absorbed for about two hours before heading for the pool where we spent about 30 minutes 'gushing' like whales up and down until it was time to get the bus downtown so that Noel could get his pills. The bus journey usually takes about 50 minutes but now they have added and extra stop whereby the bus goes to the new Atlantis Hotel which is on Palm Island so that people can go to the Water world type place there and so we arrived at the Mall of the Emirates at about 2.15 and ready for lunch. We made our way to food court and tried out 'Charlies' subs which were quite good really and then followed by some glorious Baskin & Robbins Ice cream, if only UK companies could make such a product. Then in to the Pharmacy where I explained my predicament and that to prove my requirement I have a copy of the prescription but they said it was not necessary and £ 10.00 later I was in possession of the required pills. We walked the Mall and checked out the cinema but nothing took our fancy and then headed for the new Dubai Metro which actually is an overground Monorail which has recently opened and very nice it is too and also quite cheap. Many stations are still closed, I guess about 75 % but nevertheless we were not deterred and used it to get to the other mall called Ibne Battuta Mall only this station was not yet open and so we had to get on a free bus to the mall. This Mall is full for the famous brands of D&G, Harvey Nick's etc, and all those Italian brands which charge and arm and a leg for a tie.
Anyway we checked out the cinema here and again nothing we fancied and so we headed back to the main door to wait for the Hotel bus to take us back to the Jebel Ali.
After a quick shower we headed over to the sports bar for a light snack only to see the UGLY where Tottenham Hotspurs wiped the floor with Chelsea. Harry watch your back mate or you are a dead man!!!. What a game this was with John Terry being sent off and this was very wrong as the ref got the first yellow very very wrong indeed. This is from a completely unbiased Chelsea supporter.
And so to bed and looking forward to the Chinese Formula 1 Grand prix tomorrow.
Oh and by the way, we have been watching with strong interest the problems surrounding the Volcano dust cancelling flights etc and we are beginning to think it may affect us. We met a couple in the Sports Bar tonight who are travelling back from Australia on Emirates Airlines and they have been advised that their return to London could be delayed for 10 to 14 days.
If this affects us as we have a cunning plan... We plan to use our Elmbridge Bus passes and travel home by local bus on a country by country basis and hope to make it back for New Years Eve.
Not good really.We also I spotted this comment on the Daily Telegraph today sent in by a guy called Alister Campbell. He stated that there has never been a flight chaos situation like this under the Tory Party and that to avoid a future challenges that all should vote Tory come the May elections.Umm!!
No photos today I am afraid as did not feel in the mood....

थे सुन इस शिन्गिंग अत जेबेल अली होटल

For some strange reason the Blogger internet based software that I use keeps changing my typing in to Arabic and so now I have to prepare it all in MS Word and then paste to the site. Oh well such is life.
The sun is shining and a following a good breakfast we headed to the beach where the staff are very busy setting up this big event and lo and behold on the signs is the Swiss Air Cargo and Swiss the Airline signs all over the place and so it could be a Swiss function I guess? There were also signs for UBS and Credit Suisse put up later in the morning and what with a proliferation of Swiss Flags and also all the tables being laid in the same colours we can now safely assume its a Swiss function. This will start a 1600 hours today and so we will sneak down later to what is going on.
After a nice morning spent relaxing under the palm trees we headed over to the beach bar and cafe for a quick bite and whilst sitting there the wind got much stronger to the point where they had to pull down all the sun umbrellas and also sand was beginning to get blown about quite a bit and so we thought ‘bugger this’ and headed back to the room for a well earned rest. Should be interesting to see how they cope with the strong winds at the Swiss Party later on. Mind you many Swiss people who live in the mountains must be used to it!.

We had dinner at the Sports Club and watched the Swiss whoop it up, actually they were quite sober which is their norm.

We arrived safely in Dubai

The check in at BA terminal 5 was quick and we had a nice meal in one of the restaurants prior to boarding the aircraft and we left pretty much on-time. The seat allocated to us was great, thanks to Sue ( a friend in BA) but we found the seats uncomfortable for sleeping in and six hours was enough for both of us. I guess we have been spoiled using Virgin and Air NZ business class compared to this BA World Traveller Plus whilst the Business class seats on the aircraft looked fine. Oh well next time. The cabin crew did not appear happy but when you consider what has happened to them and being let down badly by their Union its going to be tough for a while for them all.
The section we were in was nearly empty, only about 13 passengers in 48 seats (I think) but Business Class looked full
We arrived at the new modern Dubai Airport where you negotiate so many escalators that you begin to think that the guy who designed the airport had a large shareholding in Schindler. After walking what seems like 18 miles going up and down escalators we arrived at immigration which was very fast indeed. I suppose they believe that if you have made the long trek to immigration then you should stay but it is certainly a nice airport. We arrived about twenty minutes early and so had to wait for the car to meet us but we finally arrived at the Hotel and will have to wait about two hours for a room, so hence this blog which I am writing in the Hotel Lobby overlooking the Marina and also the palm trees next to the beach. We have had breakfast courtesy of the Hotel and would hope to be in the room at about 11.30 local time.
The drive from the airport through the new buildings and next to the brand new monorail system which seems to run for miles and no doubt we shall try it out before we leave here. When we first came to this Hotel some 15 years ago the road from the Airport was ,for the majority of the route, devoid of any buildings but now the road is lined by newly completed and quite a few unfinished buildings.
When signing on to this blog for some reason Blogger recognises that I am in the Middle East and directs me to that site which is all written in Arabic and so will have to sort this out when I am less tired.
The sun is shining and its about 30 degrees C and very little humidity. The Hotel is quite full with some people from Easter time but they will most likely leave this weekend as the kids have to go back to school.
We wnt to our room around 1130 and found that the rooms and cooridors have been completely updated since our last visit and they are very nice now. Whilst checking emails found out about the Volcano dust now covering part of Europe with many flights cancelled and it would appear that we left less than 12 hours after Heathrow was closed which was really lucky for us.
After we spent the second half of the day on the beach area with a light salad lunch and then in the evening went to the Sports Bar for a couple of glasses of wine and some local food, well Jennifer had Cottage Pie and Noel a Chinese noodle dish. On the way back through the Hotel gardens we noticed that they had started to set up a large function which we presume will be tomorrow-lets see how this develops

We are off to Dubai tonight!!!

Well at 9.40 tonight we head off into the clouds on a BA 777 for our 6.5 hour flight to Dubai.
We will be staying at the Jebel Ali Hotel, see link for details,                                                              (http://www.jebelali-international.com/Properties/JAGRS/JebelAliHotel/Hotels/Overview.aspx  it is one of our favourite Hotels where you can rely with good food, service, swimming pools and the general feeling of relaxation.Mind you it did rain once when we were there before.

It takes about 60 minutes from the Airport to the Hotel which is on a very nice location and right on the beach and with a very nice BAR.. in the sand.
We havnt flown BA for a while and lets hope the bad feelings of the cabin crew is not apparent on the flight. Watch this space....
Next report will be on Friday.....

So why has ir been so quiet???

Somehow since we returned back home the time has flown by. The weather generally speaking, that is until last weekend, has been pretty appalling .

We took the caravan out of storage and went to Grafham near Petworth in West Sussex for four nights but had to come back early as Jennfer was struggling with a bad stomach problem and so after 2.5 hours waiting for a Doctor in Petworth and three days of almost continual rain we decided to cut our losses and head home.

In the interim and whilst we were both fit we had some friends over for a 60's night (see photos )which seemed to go down very well whilst last Saturday we headed to join the same friends on their boat and had a loveley and rather boozy day out and visiting an excellent retsuarant in Twickenham by the river where the food was good and the Argentinan Malbec wine was of an excellent standard.  No photos taken on this trip as I have no wish to ambbarras anybody. But a lovely day out indeed.

Well we now have all this election rubbish and ther papers and TV is full of politicians ( actually I have another name for them) never asking a question but spurting on about how the opposing parties are far worse. If I was in charge I would stop all this bullshit and allow them to answer YES or NO only and they are not allowed to comment on other parties activities or 'manifesto' at all.

So to get away from the still rather poor weather and the political nonsence we are heading down to Dubai for a few days and spending some at the Jebel Ali Hotel which we hav visited a few times before.

The rooms, food and beach et al is great and will be good to have some sun. So watch out for the updates about lying on the beach and eating and shopping.