We stayed in a beautiful hotel which had sea views and a stretch of private beach from which I plunged into the Persian Gulf for the first time in my life (point of interest - it's freaking freezing in March).
On our first full day we took the bus to Dubai, which looks in places like a film set for a science fiction movie:
Sadly, we had not allowed for the sandstorm which hit the UAE the next day, and stayed for the remainder of our trip. The temperature dropped (but we're British - it felt like a London summer to us), visibility was reduced dramatically and there was sand and dust everywhere: on surfaces, in hair, in eyes, in ears for crying out loud. Reading by the pool (again, we're British...) meant sand in the pages of books or, in my case, settling on the screen of my Kindle. Sand also would have settled in the cocktails we treated ourselves to, had they hung around long enough...
If you can't beat it, join it so we took a trip to the desert.
And did embarrasingly touristy things (yes, that is me driving a quadbike* and wearing traditional dress)
A couple of days before we left, we went back to Dubai to go to the top of Burj Khalifa. Well, they call it "at the top" but it's only (only!) 124 floors up, which is actually about half-way up the building. The city below looks like a model, although visibility was still hampered by the sandstorm.
