With or Without a Burka

As many of you know (most of all my husband) when there is an event looming in my future, my most favorite pastime is planning. He says I like to plan and plan and plan, then when the situation shifts, no big deal, it’s more reason for me to re-plan. It’s true. I do love to plan. And I would have to agree that among activities I would list as hobbies, planning tops the list as my favorite. Not only do I like it, I think I’m good at it.

By the way, WHAT did we do before the internet?

But I digress. In the near future we are taking a trip to India to visit Conrad’s family. This keeps me busy with packing lists and visa paperwork alone. BUT we are planning on stopping in the United Arab Emirates to visit my brother-in-law for a couple of days and that planning is also very fun!

So I have spent quite a bit of time researching things we might want to do in Dubai. If you ever watch the Travel Channel, you know that Dubai has become one of the premiere vacation destination in the world. And they have everything from unprecedented indoor skiing, huge malls (no taxes in UAE), 7 star hotels, and Bedouins.

So, I have narrowed down a list of things I’d like to do while in Dubai. (Isabelle, my mom, and I stopped in Dubai last fall, during Ramadan, to visit Alfred, but we only stayed a few hours and it was overnight! We saw a lot of the city and city life because it was so alive due to the holiday, but still there is so much more!)
•Visit Bedouin village/market etc. It seems like Middle Eastern culture at it’s purist. Can we find such a place? I dunno. Am I the only person who thinks even “Bedouin” is an intriguing word?
•Eat Middle Eastern Food (what is this? Like Lebanese food? I am feeling profoundly ignorant in the area of international cuisine)
•Take home something purely Arabian….that’s not a carpet….or a burka.
•Ski/snowboard/toboggin at the indoor ski mountain. Come one…where else can I snow ski..in the middle east??
•Stay at a NICE hotel and get a massage. Oh ya…enough said.
•Visit the man made island of the Palm Jimira. This has been called the 7th wonder of the world, can be seen from space, and the mass amounts of real estate on this property sold out within 72 hours of opening sales! Seriously!

Now, my remaining thoughts are, how do I fit all of this into two days? How do I prioritize? And of course, how do we pay for all of my grand plans? If you were going with us, what would you want to do?