Adventures as a Tour Guide

This week, I'm playing tour guide for a girlfriend visiting from Los Angeles. We've exchanged countless emails, discussing various sites to visit and activities to try. She's only here for five full days and we have lots of things we want to cram in. Of course, we'll also be battling her jet-lag, my heat intolerance, and Craig's shifting schedule.

By the time she boarded her flight, we had settled on an outline for our five days:

Sunday - Craig had to work in the morning, but he would finish around 11 a.m. and take us to Dubai. We got tickets to go up the Burj Khalifa and I had a list of options depending on our energy level, including visiting the gold souk, viewing the fountain show at the Dubai Mall, looking at Ski Dubai in another mall in Dubai, driving around Dubai, and having a traditional Arabic dinner.

Monday - I made reservations for the High Tea at the Emirates Palace. I thought we might visit Heritage Village or walk to Corniche, if we felt up to it in the heat. I suspected that this second day would be the worst for jet lag and didn't want to over-program it.

For the other three days, I had one main goal for each day, with a few extras: (1) Grand Mosque, Al Wahda Mall, and local mall, (2) Craig's "secret" project, and (3) a dessert tour, to be selected from the hotel's offerings, with an afternoon recovering.

Of course, with Craig's schedule being so...fluid...we had to alter our plans before she even arrived. We picked her up at the airport Saturday night. On Sunday, Craig went to work and we caught a cab later that morning to spend the day at his project, pushing our Dubai trip later in the week.

We had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory in Yas Mall. Our server grated parmesan onto my pasta, telling me to let her know when I had enough.

I think I got more than enough.