Weekend Adventure to the Dubai Marina

After allowing me to recover from my travels, Craig wanted to spend a weekend at the Dubai Marina. Looking back, it's a bit odd that we spent a month in Dubai and never visited the Marina area. But the "neighborhoods" or developments in Dubai are so distinct and separate (even when they are geographically close) that it's easy to miss a few. So we drove up for the weekend.

At night, in the Dubai Marina, it's easy to see why people compare Dubai to Las Vegas. (This isn't really the view I got of Dubai from where we lived before.)

And during the day, the ever-present construction cranes tell you that you're in a city constantly building. (This is consistent with every part of Dubai.)

We went out for dinner our first night. We enjoyed a brunch in our hotel on Friday. And we strolled along the water Friday night, before returning to our room and indulging in a room service dinner. Craig got a good picture of me at dinner our first night out:

On our drive "home" from Dubai, we stopped at Motiongate. Let me just start by saying - it was hot. Extreme heat being one of my migraine triggers, we had to skip some of the rides. For whatever reason, attractions with 3D and other effects that can cause a disconnect between the motion I feel and the motion I see are also migraine triggers.  For more obvious reasons, I try to limit the number of migraine triggers I expose myself to at one time.

At this park, I ran into another problem. On several of the rides, I wasn't allowed to wear my glasses. I understand the fear of sunglasses flying off rollercoasters, but this went further than that. I've never had this issue with my glasses before. (We met up with a Thinkwellian who makes his hobby of riding every rollercoaster in the world - he came prepared for this situation with a sports strap for his glasses. But I've never encountered this issue and been unable to talk my way around it.)

My uncorrected vision is very, very poor. It's less than 20/200, which is the level of sight used to determine legal blindness. Of course, my corrected sight is fine, so I'm not considered blind. Except, perhaps, when forced to leave my glasses behind. I think it's safe to say that I was not happy and did not enjoy several of the rides that I might otherwise have enjoyed.

Craig did take this picture of me in the Lionsgate area. But to my fellow Hunger Games fans - you did not miss much here. This was something of the highlight...this...picture opportunity.

Things did improve slightly when we moved on to Dreamworks - the indoor part of the theme park. It was more than just the relief from the heat; it's a nicer area of the park. But still, I was battling the combination of migraine triggers and the rules regarding wearing my glasses on several rides, so I cannot really say that I enjoyed it as much as I might have done.

We had lunch a little late because we couldn't find a place in the park that looked the least bit appealing. Even in the Riverwalk area, the dining options were sparse on a Saturday afternoon. We finally found a flame grilled chicken place that looked acceptable. Here I am pictured with my skewers of chicken, which really are as large as they look in the picture. I'd only wanted one, but they had a special for two for less than a dollar more, so we had leftovers. It was good, but, as they say, hunger is the best sauce.