So, up at 9am, it's weekend so I'm full of adventure.
I read the daily papers for things to do while I'm having an extended breakfast, but there's nothing in them that helps to move me in any particular direction.
I remember the map I got on my first day in the hotel and have a look at what's available and interesting.
First choice, Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Mosques are usually done in exquisite architecture, marble, polished granite, towering minarets, huge domes. Right, so that's number one on the list.
As I don't know how long I'll be there, I don't make any further plans.
Grab a taxi, tell him where to go and off he speeds, jabbering away like a Pakistani machine gun. "Make trip interesting for you, sir. Been here how long sir?" Hundreds of questions, one after the other. It's worse than The Weakest Link. "Shut the fuck up" I think and strangely enough, he does exactly that.
The balance of the 30min drive is in total silence.
Coming off the highway, I see the minarets above the high embankment and the camera is made ready. I pay the cabbie and he asks if he should wait. "No thanks" I say. It's just after 11am.
I wak up about 30 steps to be confronted by a "security guard" (an Indian guy, black suit, walkie talkie) who tells me that non-Muslims aren't allowed into the mosque until after 2pm on Fridays. I'm gobsmacked. The bastard cabbie could have had the fuckin' decency to tell me.
It's just a little more after 11am.....fuuuuuuck!!
I sit down on a wall for a while, in the baking sun, and have another look at the un-visitable mosque. It is quite magnificent in its white-marbled splendour. But it's fuckin' hot where I'm sitting so I hail another taxi, thinking I'll go back to the hotel, dejected.
Instead, I have a brain-fart and tell the new cabbie to head for the Emirates Palace Hotel, the only 7 star hotel on the planet.
Fuck me, my mouth is on fire, but more about that later!!
There is a long driveway to the hotel. It looks as big as a palace a I'm walking towards it, manicured gardens, dancing fountains and glittering cobbled roadway. So far, it;s not overly impressive as a building and I'm wondering what the fuss is about.
I push a fifteen feet high door open as easily as a normal house door and a long-legged woman in an oriental looking robe says something I don't quite pick up and I ask her to repeat with a polite "Pardon?"
Then, in an almost German-like staccato, I make out she's telling me that there is some guy holding another door open for me, about ten metres away. I say I didn't see him and I'm sorry, and she says, "Oh well, you are through the door already, you should come in". Nice start, bitch.
Past an archway and I can already see why it's seven start. Fuck me! the interior is coloured gold from top to bottom. Gold and coppery hues light everything in sight. The ceiling, at its lowest point, is about two stories above me and the main atrium is about five stories high and 30m across.
I cannot describe the detail in the place, so the photos will have to, when I upload them eventually.
There is not a sign of a piece of luggage, which must be taken charge of by the valets before it's even taken out of your Ferrari/Mercedes/Bentley/limo. There are three Ferraris just outside the main entrance. The Beckham's must be here for the weekend.
All the passages leading away from the atrium are silent, padded in plush, thick, carpet and again the ceilings are very high above me.
The glasswork on the doors is intricately etched and all the doorways leading to the outside are arched high.
There is a grand staircase leading down to the beach level, but another "security guard" stops everyone from going through. Guests only.
On the walls flanking the staircase are two tapestries, each about 20m long and 5m high, one depicting the hotel by day, the other by night, down to the light cast by the lamp posts.
down one corridor, I come across about 50 glass cabinets, each displaying genuine artifacts from ancient Greece, Mexico, Egypt, Peru, China and a couple of others, even African. Some of the bits, according to their little plaques, date back to about 500BC and others to as early as 600AD, so even they are still +-1,400 years old. There is one Chinese piece that I like, but at AED48,000 I keep the VISA card in my wallet. A ZAR96,000 dust collector? Even at that price, SWMBO would ridicule it, and then relegate it to a dark corner somewhere, probably the back of my clothes cupboard, never to be seen again.
There are some really nice pieces, but not one under ZAR10k.
It is about 2pm when I feel I've had enough opulence, so I head for the door/archway out.
The Marina Mall is a short 1km walk away along a seaside walkway, an extension of the same one I walked on my first night in the city. The entire walkway is about 10km long.
First thing I do is find a cold drink and a snack. I forgot my bottle of water in the hotel so by now am quite thirsty.
the mall is packed with people of all shapes, sizes and nationalities, all looking to do some day-off-shopping.
I wander around the place (these fuckers don't do small malls), in and out of clothes shops, gadget stores and electronics emporiums. Again, I think about an i-Gadget but I can't bring myself to do it. If it was an iPad combined with a phone for a hundred bucks, sure, but ZAR2,600 just for an iPod, I don't think so. And for ZAR4k, I can't justify that for a large iPad either. So I walk on and on.
It's 16h30 when I grab a taxi back to the hotel to chill out for a while before dinner.
I almost nod off on the bed but stop myself, knowing that if I sleep now, I would not sleep properly later.
Just after 7pm, I dress into long pants and head down to the Cho Gao Asian restaurant attached to the hotel. It's happy hour, so I get two pints of Tiger draught beer for the price of one. Bargain.
My starter is a mixed platter, six skewers (3 chicken, 3 beef), 3 spring rolls and 3 pieces of tempura-battered egg plant (brinjal), accompanied by two dips, one peanut, the other savoury. Delicious.
for the main course, I go for a Lamb Manama curry, with rice and sambals. Fuck me if it doesn't just about blow my fuckin' head off! I have never had a curry as hot as this. It is quite ridiculously hot. After a while, a waitress sees me blowing my nose and comes back with more serviettes, "Just in case" she says. Fuckin' just as well, I think to myself.
I am sweating and sniffing like never before.
The night ends, in front of the TV, as usual.
Part 8, sometime soon...
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