Sylvia's Journal

Enjoying our newly acquired freedom of simply walking around on the streets we spent hours exploring Dubai’s souks: the spice souk, the gold souk, the fabric souk, the pashmina souk, the electronic souk and the just-stuff souk.

We watched the stuff being loaded and unloaded along the creek on or from gigantic and rickety looking dhows, some with their center of gravity precariously high. We hope they either unload or don’t encounter rough seas. We surprised the Iranian crew of one of the dhows by addressing them in our halting Farsi once we knew their nationality.

We marveled at the mild weather of Dubai. It reminded me of the temperatures of my childhood summers in Holland, a pleasant 70 degrees. This was definitely a whole lot better than the 110 degrees during our July visit which made walking around an act of insanity.

We ate fried shrimp and fish in a small outdoor cafe along the creek, enjoying our first seafood in months, and sipped our fresh mango and coconut juices. Today was truly a first day of vacation.

We’ll treat ourselves to a nice dinner before heading to the airport to settle into our cramped quarters in the back of the plane for our 16 hour flight to Atlanta.