Sandier Pastures

Little Pristine is sick. After three weeks of enjoying the great Dubai weather and running about every practical park around, flu found its way to her system. My poor little girl is staying at home, looking out at the window and asking over and over why she needs to stay indoors and in bed.

As I already mentioned in my previous post, I only have the afternoon of Thursday and the whole Friday off. That’s it. These precious time off from work needs to be planned well but when you have just arrived from a foreign land and literally crawling your way in the dark, planning can have it’s imperfections and lots of detours.

There is an Emirati food show at the Heritage and Diving Village located right near the Shindagha tunnel at the mouth of the Dubai creek. Making it simple for non-Dubai residents, the Heritage and Diving Village is where a glimpse of Dubai’s traditional culture and lifestyle that displays it’s maritime past, pearl diving and architecture can be seen. During the 45-days long Dubai Shopping Festival (Dec 20-Feb 2), the place is lively with lots of special programs including the food show. We wanted to see it so we tried to go.

The show starts at 5pm and ends at 8pm. We boarded the bus at 6. The Heritage & Diving Village is approximately just 5 kilometers away and without traffic, around 15 minutes by car. But guess what? we were caught in traffic and spent more than an hour in the bus. We had to transfer to another bus at the Gold Souq bus station and to our horror, it was already nearing 8pm.

So instead of the fancy food show, we arrived at Ghudaiba bus station with another thing in mind: dinner. Forgetting all about the Emirati food show with the empty, growling stomachs ready to devour one whole horse, we opted for some shawarma. I have come to love this local delicacy you could readily buy almost anywhere in Dubai.

Summing up my precious Thursday limited day off, we spent more than 2 hours on the road inside a very cramped bus, went all the way to the edge of Dubai creek just to miss the food show we wanted to see and went back home tired and hungry (even after the tasty shawarma we had!).

Lessons learned this week: Don’t hop on any public transport after 5 pm. Chances are, we will only be caught in very bad traffic and spend the entire day off looking over bus windows and occasionally seeing some irate Indians fight over bus seats. (Most offices have Thursday afternoon-Friday off)