Birthday wedding brunch
http://blog.rjbudden.com/2011/05/birthday-wedding-brunch.html
So after a fantastic 10 days at home (where the sun shone and the temperature wasn't far off of that in Dubai), it was back to the desert. The trip to the UK was pretty hectic: Birmingham for a stag do, London for work, Basingstoke for a wedding, but it was great catching up with everyone after 3 months away.
Back in Dubai it was straight back into work following an overnight flight from Heathrow. I flew with Qatar Airways so had a brief layover in Doha. By the time I got to work at about 11am I was feeling pretty out of it so it was a long day til I managed to escape home. Unfortunately most of my other flights over the next 12 months are going to be overnighters so I really need to work on getting an upgrade so I can get some more sleep next time.
After a few trips down to Abu Dhabi during the week, Friday eventually rolled round, which meant it was brunch time again. The venue this time was Saffron at the Atlantis, the hotel at the end of the Palm Jumeirah. The food was amazing - sea food, Chinese, Indian, English roast dinner, Italian - and there was a huge selection of drinks on offer - beers, wine, pina colado in a coconut, a jaegermeister station... the list goes on. We absolutely stuffed ourselves sat out in the sun over the course of 3 hours. I even got a chocolate birthday cake which was great, although most people were too full to eat it, and the sun didn't do it any favours as it sat slowly melting in the 30-odd degree heat.
They were showing the royal wedding on Sky News inside, and in honour of our future king's nuptials, we spent the brunch (and most of the rest of the day) holding Will and Kate face masks, which went down well with a lot of the other Brit ex pats!
Back in Dubai it was straight back into work following an overnight flight from Heathrow. I flew with Qatar Airways so had a brief layover in Doha. By the time I got to work at about 11am I was feeling pretty out of it so it was a long day til I managed to escape home. Unfortunately most of my other flights over the next 12 months are going to be overnighters so I really need to work on getting an upgrade so I can get some more sleep next time.
After a few trips down to Abu Dhabi during the week, Friday eventually rolled round, which meant it was brunch time again. The venue this time was Saffron at the Atlantis, the hotel at the end of the Palm Jumeirah. The food was amazing - sea food, Chinese, Indian, English roast dinner, Italian - and there was a huge selection of drinks on offer - beers, wine, pina colado in a coconut, a jaegermeister station... the list goes on. We absolutely stuffed ourselves sat out in the sun over the course of 3 hours. I even got a chocolate birthday cake which was great, although most people were too full to eat it, and the sun didn't do it any favours as it sat slowly melting in the 30-odd degree heat.
They were showing the royal wedding on Sky News inside, and in honour of our future king's nuptials, we spent the brunch (and most of the rest of the day) holding Will and Kate face masks, which went down well with a lot of the other Brit ex pats!
Following the brunch we headed to Nassimi beach at Atlantis - pretty chilled out with a bar, beds and big bean bags on the beach, which later turned into a full on rave. We stayed for a few hours before moving on, somewhat woozily, to 360 at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel.
The challenge with the Friday brunch is to keep going all day into the evening - not always easy when you've started at midday. Once or twice I found myself checking my watch thinking it must be getting near midnight when it was actually only about 7.30pm. On this occasion we battled on through and later ended up back at home playing guitars into the small hours of the morning...
The challenge with the Friday brunch is to keep going all day into the evening - not always easy when you've started at midday. Once or twice I found myself checking my watch thinking it must be getting near midnight when it was actually only about 7.30pm. On this occasion we battled on through and later ended up back at home playing guitars into the small hours of the morning...
The temperature is still slowly on the up, hitting 40C once or twice, but generally in the mid to high 30s. Its actually been pretty nice, a cool breeze generally keeping the extreme heat off. I also think I'm probably getting acclimatised to it which is good as the worst is definitely yet to come!
A trip to Kuwait beckons this week which should be fun - I think it's going to be somewhat different there than what I'm used to in Dubai...
