...and then we went back to Philip and Bernadette's place to pack up our stuff! Thanks so much for being the best, best, best hosts ever! The offer to stay with us in NYC still stands - and we're going to have to work our asses off to even coming close to showing the kind of time you showed us! Thanks again!
Needless to say, we road that shit like three times! Hahahah. After the mall, our original plan was to go to Bernadette's skeet shooting club, but we ended up losing track of time at the amusement park by the time we were ready to head out, the shooting club had already closed! So after the mall, we went out for an Italian dinner (where I strangely didn't take any photos)...
Here's a group shot of the four of us doing our best to pretend that we're not freezing our fucking asses off! (We all laughed at the winter hats that were for sale because we figured "How cold can it really be in there?" Surprise, surprise! Turns out, if you want to keep snow in the desert from melting, you need a room that's really fucking cold.
After we'd finished skiing indoors, I didn't think that the mall would have any other tricks up its sleeve that would impress me...but that was only because I didn't know that the Mall of the Emirates is also home to...
I was so fucking excited to go I could hardly finish my lunch! Here's Faisal and Biba about to enter a world of indoor skiing! (Everyone decided to ski except Meredith. She was like "I don't even like skiing outdoors...fuck that bullshit." Hahaha).
The lunch time crew! From the right: Philip, Biba, Faisal, Mer and Philip's friend. The food was great, but if you look in the background, you'll notice something more interesting than the food...
We slept in on Friday. Here's Biba, Faisal and Meredith relaxing in Biba and Phil's amazing all-glass living room and trying to work up the motivation to do something.
The ride back to Bernadette and Phil's was a soggy, gritty, sandy affair, but at least we didn't get caught! We stayed up super late playing a trivia video game called "Buzz."
After lazing around and digesting for a while, we finally got motivated to get up and get going. On the way out, someone was nice enough to take a pic of all of us together.
Madinat Jumeirah is ridiculous even by Dubai's standards. It's a resort that takes up an entire kilometer of the coast and the entire thing is connected by man-made waterways. Here's the "water taxi" that showed up to take us from the lobby to the restaurant.
After toweling off and getting changed back into dry clothes, Meredith called her friend Faisal and he confirmed that he'd be driving from Abu Dhabi to Dubai to come visit later in the evening! Here's Bernadette on the phone explaining how to get to her apartment in Dubai because, get this, there isn't a standard address system in Dubai. Stop for a minute and let that sink in. Seriously, how crazy is that. All mail is delivered to PO Boxes. If you need something delivered to an actual address, all of the boxes and shipped labels there have a huge blank rectangle on them so that you can draw a map of where you are.
They were actually sweet like little baby lambs! Bernadette was hoping that we'd be able to take them out and play with them, but the pens were locked and the man who takes care of them was out on errands and wasn't going to be back for a couple of hours. We didn't want to wait around that long...
Right around midnight, exactly FIVE HOURS AFTER WE LANDED, Bernadette arrived at the airport and somehow managed to talk her way through security despite not having a passport or any airplane tickets with her! She spotted us (all greasy and grimy and dejected) and came over and said hi! Then I took this picture! After years of being friends online, this was the first time we'd met in person!
We sat down and told her the whole story and she told us not to worry because, "Mahmoun is on his way." I was like "It's midnight! Who's Mahmoun and what's he going to do?" Bernadette explained that he was a man who worked for her boss and that he was a "problem fixer." (Just like Mr. Wolf!!!)
Sure enough, about ten minutes later a very large, serious-looking Emirati man walked up to the armed guards at immigration and with a nod, they let the dude through! We were like "Whoa." Mahmoun came over to us, and asked us to tell him the problem (and he even whipped out a little pad to take notes just like Mr. Wolf!). After we'd finished explaining to him that we were almost 100% sure that the passport was still on the plane, he was like "Meredith you come with me. Bernatte and Brian, you wait here."
He came back like two minutes later with ten airline employees in tow and said something like "This airplane is supposed to fly back to New York in forty-five minutes, but it's not going anywhere until the passport that's on there is found. So let's go find it." Sure enough, just ten minutes later...
While I never imagined that I'd find myself in Dubai, I certainly never imagined that I'd find myself at a water park in Dubai! Thanks for taking us, Beebs!
And the last photo was of her just chilling with the lion. The first photo's great because its all attacking her, but this photos great because you can see her liony face and you're just like "Holy fuck. That's a lion!.
The other two photos were equally amazing. The second one was of a baby cheetah licking her nose! Oh, you think I'm kidding about the fact that this baby cheetah is actually licking her nose? Well, how about we zoom in a bit!
...the first one was a picture of Biba getting attacked by a lion in her boss' office! I was totally blown away. I saw that she was online and was immediately like "OMG! I THOUGHT YOU WERE KIDDING ABOUT LIONS AND CHEETAHS AT YOUR OFFICE! WTF?"
