A few things that I forgot to mention on yesterdays blog.

In the restaurant, I was looking at the menu wanting to know what the prices of the degustation menu was – John kept saying it is at the bottom.  I squint a bit as my eye sight isn’t that good for reading, old age and all!  Still can’t make it out – there is stuff about service charge and the print is pretty small.  I inform John that I still can read it and with a hint of annoyance he shows me where the pricing is – then he realises my menu has no prices.  I guess he is meant to pay the bill!

Then I want a red wine, looking at the wine list – expecting it to be a little more pricey than Australia, jeepers creepers – you can’t afford to drink in Dubai.  As an example – my favourite wine a Cloudy bay Pinot 2006 AU$60 in the shops was AED900, which is AU$324. Yes I can assure no calculation error.  They do have a rather cool think which is a decanter roofer which inserts a needle into the bottle still corked and sirens out wine and replaces it with gas – which means you can have a small, medium or large measure of a fine wine.  Still costs you about a $100 a glass.  After umming and ahhring we splurged out on a bottle, have to work another year to pay it off!

Back to today’s blog, I couldn’t wake up this morning.  Slow rise, we actually made breakfast which was a splendid feast with anything and everything you could imagine  for lunch and breakfast. Curry, dumplings, usual breakfast stuff, continental and full.  Fruit, smoothies – you name it it was there.

Then back to the Mall to buy John a leather Jacket – he would have tried on about 30 yesterday and shortlisted 2.  So back to Boss and Ted Baker to do the test and final choice.  The Boss one was slightly tighter than the other, so the Ted Baker won and he is now the proud owner of a new leather jacket.  He looks pretty swish if I may say so.

Then to lunch (or they call it high tea) at At-Mosphere which is the restaurant at the top of the Burj Khalifa.  The lifts are pretty confusing, the building is shaped like a 3 pointed star and different level

The view from the restaurant is a little disappointing as it is so dusty and hazy – you can hardly see anything.  The Dubai Fountain (yesterdays blog) was good from above as you can see all the jets and mechanics behind it.  High tea was great, we were so full we wanted to vomit.  Definite diet when we get home.  Some photos to share the experience

Then it was back to the room to change into suitable clothing to visit the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.  Abu Dhabi is about 150km down the coast from Dubai, John researched and the best way to get there was hire a Driver/Car for 6 hours.  The trip is pretty quick there is a highway all the way which is 6 lanes wide and lit with street lights all 150KM.  There was a really cool building, which I think should be VW’s headquarters.

Suddenly the Mosque is visible, it almost takes your breath away, I have seen pictures and read up about it but it is exquisite.  The carpet in the main prayer hall is considered to be the world’s largest carpet and designed by Iranian artist Ali Khaliqi. This carpet measures 5,627 m² (60,570 sq ft), and was made by around 1,200-1,300 carpet knotters. The weight of this carpet is 35 ton and is predominantly made from wool (originating from New Zealand and Iran). There are 2,268,000,000 knots within the carpet and it took approximately two years to complete.  In a Mosque there are lines where you stand to pray, there were no lines on the carpet, so they makers thought about it and shaved a passage to create lines.  So in the massive carpet they shaved about 50 columns to create these continuous lines in the carpet which can only be seen or felt when you are on top of them.

There are seven imported chandeliers from the company Faustig in Munich Germany that incorporate millions of Swarovski crystals. The largest chandelier is the second largest known chandelier inside a mosque, the third largest in the world and has a 10 m (33 ft) diameter and a 15 m (49 ft) height.

The pools along the arcades reflect the mosque’s spectacular columns, which becomes even more glorious at night. The unique lighting system was designed to reflect the phases of the moon. Beautiful bluish gray clouds are projected in lights onto the external walls and get brighter and darker according to the phase of the moon.

The 96 columns in the main prayer hall are clad with marble and inlaid with mother of pearl, one of the few places where you will see this craftsmanship.

I had very high expectations of this part of the trip and I wasn’t disappointed one bit, she was magnificent and even more gorgeous at night.

And this brings out holiday to an end, tomorrow morning we catch a flight home to beautiful Sydney.  Thank you for sharing our holiday either virtually or physically – it has been amazing.  Thanks John for organising.

Categories: Portugal

Shaz Thompson

Mad about golf, enthusiastic about life, totally in love with my husband and just having fun.