I went swimming again after Craig headed to work. I worked on my blog. And I read for a bit. I was reading a novel called Endgame - but it was horrible and I've given up on it. I got hungry early and decided to try cooking again. As it turns out, I consumed most of the morning attempting to make an edible lunch.
I started with instant noodles again. This time, I tried a new flavor - cheese. From reading the ingredients, however, I can assure you that no actual cheese was harmed in the making of this dish. In fact, no dairy products at all were included. And it tasted rather like that was the case:
I wouldn't say it was bad, necessarily. It just wasn't good. At all. Instead of a bad aftertaste, it had a bad...pretaste? first taste? I don't know how to describe it. The smell was off-putting, which isn't a good way to start. And the initial taste was somewhat chemical. Then the cheese / nutritional yeast flavor kicked in. It wasn't terrible, but it was difficult to get it into my mouth. After a few bites of that, I gave it up.
I decided to try this Basmati rice with mushrooms that I'd found at the grocery store. The package looked nice. And it cooked in the microwave. What could possibly go wrong?
It was sweet. I don't know what kind of mushrooms were used, but they tasted like raisins. I detest cooked raisins in cakes and cookies, but in no circumstance do I want them in my rice. According to the ingredients, they weren't raisins, but sugar was the third ingredient which might have caused the sweet flavor.
In the middle of my lunch-making fiasco, a repair man turned up to look at the oven. He played with it for a long time before calling me in. Then he showed me that you just have to have the oven door open when igniting the flame and you have to hold down the lighter for about 5 seconds. The door had just closed when I got the expected phone call: "Miss Hanna? Did someone come to fix your oven? Is it working now?" Goodness.
I gave up on prepackaged foods and returned to my classic - mayo, tuna, and green onions. This time I made noodles to go with it, because my stale bread can only be more stale now.
After lunch I attempted to nap again. This was a terrible idea and I'm done trying it. It's difficult to fall asleep despite my exhaustion, because it's light outside. But once I'm asleep, my body is back on L.A. time and refuses to wake up in the early morning hours after a single hour of sleep.
I finally pried myself out of bed, got dressed, and walked over to the mall. I was wearing perfectly "respectful" clothing - jeans and a long-sleeved, button-up SPF shirt (buttoned all the way up). But for some reason, walking to the mall I attracted a number of stares. This continued in the mall as well. I can only guess it was because I was by myself? Or because I have red hair. I can't say I've seen another person with red hair here.
I was on a coffee-focused mission. First, I needed coffee because of the ill-fated nap. But more importantly, Craig was nearly out of his Starbucks Via (an instant coffee he likes to take when he travels). I started at Starbucks, where I got my usual iced vanilla soy latte. The Starbucks experience is very similar to being at home. Except that my name is so unusual that they asked me to spell it for them. And they didn't call it out when my drink was finished. My drink was good, but the store didn't carry Via.
No problem, I thought. The Dubai Mall has four Starbucks shops on the directory. Unfortunately, I was only able to find three of them. And none of them carried Via.
I decided that a good alternative would be a pour-over device, like my brother uses to make coffee. I never found any of those, but I did find several french press options. Starbucks, Eataly, and Waitrose all had a french press. Surprisingly, Starbucks was the least expensive option. I also looked at Nesspresso, ThinkKitchen, and several other stores without finding any coffee making options.
Just as I was entering Waitrose, Craig texted to say that he was back and we were meeting everyone to go to dinner at 5:30. This was about 20 minutes away when I saw the text. The Dubai Mall has free wifi, so I'm able to get texts while I'm there, but my phone was in my purse so I didn't hear the text when it came in. We were going to eat in the mall, so we decided it would be easier for me to stay and meet them at the restaurant.
On my coffee search, I saw a Claire's. I needed a new hairband because mine had lost all its elastic from swimming. I picked out a couple options and went to the counter. For some reason, they wanted my mobile number. I gave it to them, which caused some confusion because it doesn't have the right number of digits. The lady asked me what country my number was from.
"U.S." I replied.
*blank stare*
"United States?"
*blank stare*
"America?"
"Oh. U. S." She finally said, writing down "U.S." on her form.
I don't think she had a clue where I was from. Then she asked for my "good name", which caused such continued confusion that she finally just looked at my credit card (I had already handed it to her) and wrote it down from there.
I met Craig and the team at Yo! Sushi. The girls decided to go someplace else, so only four of us at Yo! Sushi. Of course I got my favorite thing - all of the salmon:
By the time we finished, Craig and I had collected a few plates (to be fair, you can also see Brad's plates in this picture):
We had tickets to go up the the viewing level of the Berj Khalifa. This picture was taken in the queue.
Craig had gotten us special tickets that allowed us to go to a higher floor. This ticket also included traditional coffee:
And dates:
There were also snacks upstairs on the special floor, but I didn't take a picture of those. I had a stuffed date up there. But we had just eaten, so I didn't take anything else. They also served juice upstairs. I had orange juice and Craig had something green. I took a short video of the view from the 148th floor.
We took an elevator down to the 125th floor. We took the stairs to the 124th floor. The view was actually better from the lower floors. I think Craig took some pictures, but I didn't.
After we finished looking around, we headed back to the hotel. We made a quick stop at the grocery store to replenish my (attempted) lunch foods. Hopefully I have better luck with what I bought this time. Luckily, the nap didn't cause me any trouble getting to sleep or sleeping through the night.
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