I am in love with Dubai. However, my love affair has one small caveat. The weather.

2 lifts and ten minutes (max) to ski down. But, who can say they have been skiing in the desert

The world's tallest building?

Dancing fountains in the desert?

They dance to everything from Middle Eastern music to Mariah Carey

All of the above and more. Like I said, Dubai malls rock. And therefore, we spent an inordinate amount of time in the mall.

And if you just can't quite make yourself spend your entire trip in the mall, perhaps you'll fancy heading out to the Palm Jumeriah for a visit to the Atlantis.

I recognised it as soon as we drove up. It is over the top in so many wonderful ways, from the crazy beautiful blown glass sculpture to what it's most famous for.




Yes, another aquarium. And if looking just isn't enough, try looking at the fishes while enjoying dinner at the Ossiano Restaurant. A bit pricey, but it's certainly a novelty and the food isn't half bad.



 Oh Dubai. Until we meet again - so much more to see and eat!

Last year, I wrote about my trip to Abu Dhabi but failed to share my experiences in Dubai. Why you might ask? I made the rookie mistake of taking a camera that wasn't charged. Charged just enough for one night in Abu Dhabi, but that's about it.

And because of that, I just never wrote about it. Because if there's no pictures, it didn't happen, right?

Luckily, I was able to make the trip back again to Dubai this week. While I did enjoy last years short flight from Istanbul much better than the loooong trek from London, I was definitely not complaining about the weather. When we visited last year in May, it was already a balmy 40 degrees celsius with lots and lots of humidity (my hair hated it). This time, it was more like 23 degrees and felt like heaven compared to both last time and our cold London winter.

While this wasn't my first trip, it was one of my co-workers. So, there were some repeats from last time and some new things. More to come on my favorite things in Dubai, but today, I will share my fear-facing trip to the top of Burj Khalifa.

Despite partaking in activities such as hot air balloon rides and paragliding, I am scared of heights. I hate glass elevators, never enjoyed those really tall escalators at the Rangers Ball Park in Arlington and usually super tall buildings fall into this same category of tall things that make me anxious.

BUT, it's the tallest building in the world and I have now been talked into going twice. I still can't figure out how they did it, but despite the shaky and ear popping elevator ride, the scary wooden floors you can just about imagine falling through and the fact that you are on the 124th floor (and still not to the top), its worth it.

Burj by day via Instagram

I've now gotten to go both in the daytime and at night, and for me, the night was by far the best. Sure, you can see tall buildings in the daytime, but its just a vast dusty desert. I enjoyed seeing everything lit up a night, you completely forget you're in the middle of the desert.

View of Dubai by night - 5 years ago, none of that was there

Burj by night

 If you time it just right, you can also catch the Dancing Fountain at the Dubai mall from your spot above - in the evenings, its usually every 30 minutes, so just stake out a good spot on the glass and wait.

At the Top of the Burj - oooh, sparkly Dancing Fountain

And above all, please don't be the person to lose your camera/iphone/video camera through the slits in the glass. That may have been the scariest idea of all!

Quick Facts:
- The Burj is the tallest structure in the world at over 2,700 ft and 160 stories.
- It took just 6 years to complete the building from start to finish
- If you laid out all the rebar used in construction, it would go 1/4 of the way around the world

The Logistics:
- Make a reservation to go to the top. It usually books up in advance and its also much much cheaper if you buy in advance.
- Be prepared to wait in line, even if you've bought advance tickets. Oh and then you have to wait in line again to go back down (that is what happens with just 2 elevators!)

One of the amazing things about London and the UK is the ease of transit - without a car. I have never been a big fan of driving (especially after commuting 45 minutes each way, every day for 2 years) and love the fact that I rarely ever get in a car here. Besides the fabulous tube and buses, it is so easy to get outside of London with the train system.

This weekend we used it to our full advantage to take a day trip out to Dover. On the fast train, we made it to the coast in just over an hour, which gave us most of the day to take in the sights.

So, what are the sights of Dover? The main attraction are the White Cliffs, which was the only thing I knew about., so that's where we started. We took a boat around the marina to get a good look at the cliffs, the castle on top of the hill and the city around it.  The weather was in our favor and was beautiful, meaning we could just make out the coast of France 21 miles away.

White Cliffs of Dover - you can just make out the castle up top

After our view from the sea, our tour took us to the view by land. We followed a well trodden path to get some more great views of the cliffs. We could have spent all day wandering those paths, but with just a day, and light fading early still, we made our way back to the bus and over to Dover Castle.

It was a bit windy up there!

Dover Castle has to be one of the best protected castles I have ever seen. First off, it's in a great location - cliffs with a straight drop behind you, giant hill up in front of you. Add in the moat, and you've got yourself a pretty sure place to live. In addition to the usual, slightly cheesy, castle stuff, this castle has more history to it.

One of the things you can do at the castle are tours of the war tunnels. During WWII, thousands of allied soldiers were cornered by the Germans into Dunkerque in France. Dover, and the castle played an important part in Operation Dynamo, the rescue of these soldiers. In the end, 335,000 soldiers were rescued by boat and brought back across the English Channel to the tunnels in the cliffs of the Dover Castle. The tunnels now are filled with lots of multi-media exhibits explaining the history of the war and how the tunnels came to be of use.

View of the castle from the moat

After exhausting ourselves culturally, we (naturally) hit up the pub. We chose the White Horse Pub because of its local history. Each year, people start their trekk to swim across the English Channel in Dover. At the end of the swim (whether that's a 6.5 hr record time, or 24 hr swim), the victorious return to this pub to document their triumph on the wall. The walls are covered with hundreds of names and stories of those who made their way across the English Channel in the freezing cold water. Besides the ambiance, the food was delicious, the owner so friendly and we loved our seat right next to the fire.

One of the many signatures of a successful swimmer - can you imagine swimming for 24 hours?!

We wrapped up the evening with some seafood and wine, and good times with friends. Back to the train station for our return train.

There and back in less than 12 hours, making it the perfect day trip from London.

Before we moved to London, I had been here several times, meaning I have seen a lot of the biggest tourist attractions. Paul had been once - for 2 days. This leaves a bit of disparity between what I've seen and what he's seen. I've been trying to talk him into some of my favorites like the Victoria and Albert Museum, or the Churchill War Rooms, but last weekend, we decided to settle upon something new for the both of us. 2013 resolutions in action!

On a beautiful Sunday, we headed over to the Natural History Museum. It was lucky for us that the weather was great, because we spent 15 minutes standing outside in line to get inside. Guess when all the museums are free, they get to be popular with locals and tourists alike.

Outside of the museum - in the winter, they put an ice skating rink out front for skaters.

Since the only thing we knew about the museum was the dinosaurs, we decided to come up with a plan of attack once we got inside to make the most of our trip.

First up was food. Too many children to deal with on an empty stomach. We ate at the quick cafe, but later found out there was a true restaurant that looked like a much better deal.

Next, we meandered backwards through the museum.

First up was the reptiles and sea creatures. My favorite was the Komodo  Dragon (stuffed of course), while Paul loved the giant clam shell. Hopefully our next home will have space for a 2ftx5ft clam.

Next was the room of mammals. All around the outside are stuffed mammals like horses, zebras, bears, etc. In the middle are the mammals of the larger variety, including a whale, elephant and rhino. It can be a bit overwhelming, even for adults. They have things stuffed into every nook and cranny!



After that, we decided to go ahead and wait in line for the main attraction - the DINOS! Here you actually start up above the exhibit on a walking platform and look at the fossils from above. After viewing a mechanical T-Rex (really?) you get to make your way a long the bottom and get some history on the dinosaurs. Were they warm blooded? Cold blooded? Omnivores? Carnivores? In almost every instance, they couldn't get any true answers, but still interesting to think on.




While that was the grand attraction for us, there is still more to see.

We wandered through the room of rocks, which included precious stones and pieces of meteorites, along with many other rocks Paul could tell you lots about.

We also wandered through the hall of birds - just like the mammals, there were birds everywhere of every variety. My favorite was the hummingbird display, until I realised that this at one point was decoration in someone's home. Poor hummingbirds.

Even if you don't care about any of the exhibits, the building itself is amazing. Despite looking hundreds of years old, it was a built for purpose building in the late 1800's, with all kinds of things related to the purpose of the museum woven into the architecture. From the monkeys and butterflies all along the columns, to the flowers painted on the ceiling of the dome, nature is all around the building.  I'm pretty sure we will be making a repeat trip here to fit in everything we didn't see and perhaps visit our dinosaur friends once again.