A Corniche Pasty?

Ok, so that was a terrible, terrible title for a post, but what are you gonna do?


This weekend I took myself on a magical mystery drive around some parts of Dubai I hadn't seen yet, including the corniche. I had no idea what a corniche was before I arrived at the bit on the map labelled "Corniche", but now I know it's a sea wall with a bit of paving behind it that runs the length of the coast. I was there on Saturday, which in theory should be the busiest day out, as it's not the holy day, but is still the weekend here. The place was deserted, and I could tell why, the blistering sun made it possibly the most uncomfortable place to be. Super heated concrete and paving radiated evil heat up at you, while the sun belted down on you from on high. Sitting on the wall to take a photo left my legs feeling burnt through my shorts for about 10 mins from the 30 secs I sat there...

This is a corniche.

Having now established what a corniche is, I looked seaward and saw the third and biggest palm being built. The Palm Deira is a massive undertaking which dwarves the Palm Jumeirah and also The World to a certain extent. Anyway, here's a photo of a boat making it...

Further along the coast I found some incredible houses across the road from the corniche, they had absolute sea views and in general were great displays of wealth, not taste. There was, however, this beacon of modernist style to make up for all the faux traditional pastiche rubbish. I quite liked this place, I don't think my pic does it justice unfortunately. For me to say that is quite significant, as it's cream brick. Some of you may know my feelings about cream brick, for those who don't, none of them are pleasant.

After my coastal soujourn, I continued north (sort of) and visited the neighbouring emirate, Sharjah. Apparently lots of people who work in Dubai live in Sharjah (it's a total of 8kms away) despite the sometimes 2 hour commute (that's right, 8km can take 2-3 hours in peak hour here). I didn't really like Sharjah to be honest, mainly because I got stuck on the main road and couldn't see a way to turn around and head the other way, or any way of crossing the road. I eventually came across a set of traffic lights so I could turn around and spend an hour getting back to Dubai.

In preparation for my departure to London, I headed to the Mall of the Emirates to look for luggage straps to put around my guitar case. I ended up parking underneath Ski Dubai, the indoor ski slope previously featured on this very blog. Here's a pic of Ski Dubai from outside.

I was able to get my luggage strap, and having weighed my guitar, found it's going to be far far cheaper for me to send it by cargo to London, than to let it tip me into excess baggage. Excess baggage costs dhs101/kg, whereas cargo will cost about dhs17/kg. That's a fairly big difference huh?

I am so very excited to be going to London and being with Sal, as you all might have guessed from my last post. I can't wait! We already have so many exciting things planned, including my birthday celebrations. So instead of the now famous O'Connell St pub crawl, I will be having casual drinks at this pub:

http://www.thecharleslambpub.com/index.htm

So if anyone wants to pop in for a beer after 1pm on Sunday the 10th of June, feel free!