One of my New Year’s resolutions this year (well, OK, it’s my only one) is to try to travel more. In a few years’ time, Eloïse will be in school and regular travel will be much harder, so it’s important to cram in as much as we can now, whilst we still have few commitments to tie us down. With that in mind, the aim is to spend at least a quarter of 2007 exploring this great planet.
With the memories of our lovely, relaxing time in Iceland at the beginning of the year still fresh in our mind, we’ve been thinking about where to go next. Both Sarah and I felt a desire to be in a warmer climate, so that pretty much ruled out all of Europe at this time of year. We also didn’t want to plan a really long trip right now, so that ruled out going to Central or South America, most of Africa or (Austral)Asia. After all, if you’re going all that way, you’re going to want to see a whole host of nations.
So, after a little thought, we decided it was time to visit a part of the world that I, in particular, have been drawn to for many years: the Middle East. With much of the region not terribly well-disposed towards westerners at the moment (and who can blame them?), we thought it would be prudent to head down to the Arabian Peninsula for this, our first trip to the area.
Specifically, we’re going to visit just two countries on this trip, namely the United Arab Emirates (a.k.a. الإمارات العربيّة المتّحدة) and Oman (a.k.a. سلطنة عُمان). In fact, we’ll probably visit just two of the emirates of the UAE, Dubai (a.k.a. دب) and Abu Dhabi (a.k.a. أبو ظبي). The bulk of our trip will be to the Sultanate of Oman, as we believe it to be more rugged, more beautiful and less visited, which should hopefully make for more of an authentic adventure experience.
We didn’t want to dither, either, because the regional temperature starts to rise rapidly at the end of March, becoming uncomfortably hot very quickly. For that reason, we’re flying out to Dubai on the 20th of this month, returning a month later.
All we’ve really got booked at the moment is the flight to and from Dubai, plus the last couple of nights of our trip at the world-famous, preposterously luxurious, self-proclaimed seven star Burj Al Arab hotel.
To give you an idea of the kind of pampering I’m talking about, each suite (which is at least 170m2: there aren’t any simple rooms) in this hotel has its own private butler and check-in takes place in your suite: no more ignominious faffing around at the front desk. Other smile-inducing features are a 13 item pillow menu, a laptop with broadband Internet in every suite, a choice of 300 international newspapers, and the ability to arrange with the chef to have a personalised menu served in your suite. They’ll even provide you with a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce or helicopter transfers to and from the helipad on the roof, although I daresay we can live without either (the amusing image of strapping Eloïse’s car seat onto the back seat of a Rolls Royce notwithstanding).
Heck, we could live without any of this, but we’ve seen and heard so much about the Burj Al Arab over the years, that we just can’t pass up the opportunity to check it out while we’re in the area.
This is as decadent as we’re ever going to get, I swear.