Day 2 (2024)

12.10.2024

Visited Highlights:

• Desert of Al Ain

We land at 6:40 in the morning in Dubai. The night was terribly short. Dinner was served after midnight, and I managed to close my eyes sometime after 1 a.m.

Even before sunrise, the lights in the plane came back on, and the drink cart made its rounds.

However, I tried to sleep until landing because I still had to drive a car right after.

We quickly grabbed our bags, the immigration process was smooth, and then headed to Starbucks: I need coffee!!!

One latte macchiato later, we set off to the parking garage to pick up our rental car. It was already too hot for me in the airport, but when we came out through the sliding door, we felt like we hit a wall in the morning heat of +35 degrees!

The rental car pickup at Europcar went smoothly, and we received a white Nissan Elantra (as ordered) with just 14,000 km on the odometer. Now it's time: off to Abu Dhabi!

It's 8:30 - weekend - nothing is happening in Dubai! I've never seen the highway so empty! What luck!!!

It takes us about 1 hour and 15 minutes to cover the 130 km, then we reach our destination! My family lives only 5 minutes from Abu Dhabi Airport.

After a short chill and greetings, we head straight for lunch at the mall around the corner, then further into the desert! My cousin surprises us with the information that a meeting with several families and kids in the desert near Al Ain is planned.

Cool, we did that last year too; it was fun.

My sister-in-law and I sleep through the hour-long drive into the desert... the night was indeed short...

I wake up as we head over the sandy track into the desert. We park at the same large dune as last year, unload the cars, set up the BBQ, and then follow the kids who are already rolling down the dunes.

We climb the highest dune - quite sweat-inducing at nearly 40 degrees 🥵🥵🥵🥵 and wait for the sunset.

Afterwards, we run - at least some of us - down the dune and prepare the BBQ.

There are salads, veggies, sausages, garlic bread, etc., along with cocktails, beer, and wine. We are a colorful mix of locals living here and expats from Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Germany, Australia, the UK, the Czech Republic... very amusing!

Around us are about 15 kids - they will get their personal highlight after the BBQ (and I must say, I'm a bit envious of this): desert cinema!

A dune becomes a screen with a projector, and the large Bluetooth box makes it an experience. In the in-house desert cinema, the movie 'How to Train Your Dragon' is playing tonight - in English, of course, since everyone speaks it here.

At 9 p.m. we pack up - it's deep night out here - and drive back to Abu Dhabi.

That's already been a very cool start to the vacation!