Dubai ---yay>?

We're in Dubai.

It's been a very strange day. Slept for 3 hours on Monday night, got up and flew to Dubai, arrived at 1.30 am. We weren't allowed to check our bikes all the way through so we had to collect them. so we wandered round the airport with 3 enormous boxes, a bag big enough to put Ann in, 3 panniers and the camera bag. finally we found an emirates rep who said we could check-in our luggage 24hour before a flight. great!
so we only had to wait around for 1 1/2 hours. it didn't go smoothly. anyway, got that all sorted but just after 4am.
so we hung around until 6am then got a taxi into town. Unfortunately the Taxi didn't know were we wanted to go and the place we picked on the map, hadn't be built yet!.
the whole place is like one of those 'time share' Spanish resorts where you turn up at your luxury apartment and find cement mixers and people with spades looking at you suspiciously. But this did afford us the opportunity to see the real Dubai not just the steel and glass postcard cityscape, we decided to walk back into town, alas it turned out to be about six miles, in flip-flops and with the heaviest hand luggage possible.

we did manage to inadvertently visit all the most famous attractions on route, (basically everything along the sea front.) . town, is like a hundred oxford streets all converging into a central point but without the brand names. at about 9am the sun was up and we were walking through the most amazing market, tight dark allies like a maze and all the shops and stalls purely sold Fabric; from and for anything you can imagine.

wandered round a bit more, discovered they don't do morning coffee/breakfast... etc... shops don't open either.
so, we jumped into a taxi and has a tour round as we Hotel hopped looking for somewhere to sleep, the taxi driver's instructions were 1)3-4 star 2)in Dubai, it was fun for us and a little adventure for him. gave up after 5 fully booked hotels though and told him to drop us off at the airport, having had 3 hours sleep in 45 hours we would sleep anywhere! there's a hotel after you go through to the gates: which is were i am now! with an enormous bed white sheets and the most heavenly shower!(or so it seems to me)