DUBAI IS A CITY OUT OF THE FUTURE
We happened to be up early the morning the Queen Victoria eased into one of Dubai's modern container ports and were particularly lucky to catch this photo of the sun rising and a plane landing. Good morning Dubai.

The United Arab Emirates is the result of 6 or 7 Sultan heads of indivisual city states called Emirates, agreeing in the 70's (I think) to form one UAE country. It has been a remarkable success and is a place we would like to return to some day and we recommend it highly for anyone looking for a new and interesting place to visit. They claim that only Shanghai might have more construction cranes in use than they do. An effort to count the cranes failed when we reached 30.

When our tour bus drove down the six lane main highway in Dubai, it reminded us of a Futurama display you would see at a World's Fair..it is a city from Disney! Every thing the eye can see for miles around was built in the last 10 years or is being built right now. Of course they are building the tallest skyscraper in the world. See the cranes on top? It is now 600 meters tall and they won't say how much higher it is going for fear of someone else trying to outdo them!

The sand on this beach was the softest we had ever seen and believe us, the visitors and citizens take the Keep Dubai Clean sign seriously.

We found a new site for the Connelly family vacation next winter at this 7-Star Burj al Arab Hotel. We were allowed only to take pictures from a distance on our tour as they charge $100 just to visit the lobby!! But we figure the $15,000 per day Presidential Suite is right for us because it has 5 bedrooms and a Butler for each family... Look closely at the top left of the 54 story hotel and you will realize it is a helicopter pad where Tiger Woods and Matt Lauer drove golf balls into the ocean on the Today Show. AND we actually know a couple who have spent a couple of nights there!! Imagine!

On our tour of the city of Dubai, our bus passed a huge building by any standards, that has this large tubular shaped construction coming out of its roof! We were advised that the large structure contained the Dubai Winter Ski Resort inside The Mall of the Emirates, which like everything else in the city is the "biggest."

We were getting hungry at the end of our tour of Dubai and we wanted to see the ski resort inside the Mall of the Emirates so we were really lucky when we walked into a nice restaurant and unexpectadly were taken to a table that looked out over the entire resort.

Dubai has the neatest Museum depicting typical Arabian living and Barry took the opportunity to discuss the US Democrat Primary with this guy who has Obama handicapped as a 5-3 shot to beat Clinton.

While walking through the Mall of the Emirates in awe of the number and variety of stores, Phyllis met her new best friend, Mohammed (no kidding!) but we'll let her show you "The rest of the story!" as Paul Harvey would say.