Quick summary...
We left Vancouver on Canadian Airlines to London. Nice and comfortable on
the plane, we slept and seemed to avoid the jet-lag common to most such trips.
We were pleased with our room in London, altough it was quite small (
1
2
).
The first night we took a walk, had a bite to eat in an Irish Pub. Rob was
right when he said we should pretend 1 english pound was 1 dollar (even
though they're something like 2.4 to 1). We then walked in the park and
saw a castle.
The next day we took a tour of London. We saw many things on our bus and
Thames boat-ride-tour including Big Ben (the exact picture
that's on the HP bottle
); the Millennium Dome
; London Bridge--the famous original has been torn down, but this
disappointing rebuild
is there (the Tower Bridge
was more interesting), the Queen Mary
, and the changing of the Guards at Windsor Palace (the
English Guards
were replaced with a Canadian
Regiment
from Edmonton). Amazingly enough we saw our Head of State, Queen Elizabeth,
roaring down the street in her car.
On to Dubai!
Our room
in the Jumeirah Beach Hotel was much bigger! The
view out the window
was amazing! We had great fun at the hotel. While in Dubai we took a tour
through the desert
where we rode a camel. The dune bashing in our (thankfully)
air-conditioned vehicles
was a lot of fun (that's my watch reflection
in this picture
). That evening we got to see a belly dancer (
1
2
). We had a a lot of fun touring through downtown Dubai (
this is an Abra
--sort of a bus to get across the river). Richard and Helen were great hosts
for the second half of our Dubai days.
Our room
at their place admittedly didn't have as great a view as out the window
of the Jumeirah Beach hotel, but it was very comfortable. Richard took us
Wadi bashing (Wadi is a Canyon/Valley cut by river), and we camped over
night in Oman.
It was then back to Vancouver and back to work--very content.
Possibly more to come when we get more pictures back.