Hi and Bye Dubai

Wow - hot, hot, hot. When we left NZ on Wednesday it was 9 degrees and by the middle of the day in Dubai when we got there on Thursday it was 43 degrees!

Thanks so much to Trev (our friend) for meeting us at the airport and being our personal and knowledgeable tour guide!. Our first adventure was out on the harbour in a boat that took us from the marina around the Palm Jumeirah and back again. We also got to explore the island by car, after which we visited what is the closest thing to Heaven Maggie can imagine - the Dubai Mall. We didn't get to visit all 1200 shops but it felt like it!

Thursday dinner was spent at Time Out which is a food market like Riverside. Very relaxed.

It was a treat to see some of the buildings and hotels up close that you see on TV. The Atlantis Royal with 94 swimming pools, the Burj Al Arab where you see celebs hitting golf balls from the observation deck and of course the Burj Khalifa, tallest building in the world, which we got to whizz up to the 125 floor on Friday morning. Trevor was saying that it originally took 4 years and over 200 Architect and Engineering Consultants to design the Burj Khalifa and apparently today, with the integration of AI, under one week and 4-6 Consultants!

We also visited the Museum of the Future. This is another fabulous example of architecture and innovation. The seven floors follow a story that transports visitors to the year 2071 after entering a lift that takes you to a space station. The top floor demonstrated a space station that would be made for capturing the sun's rays and redirecting it to power earth. Other exhibits included a room that captured the DNA of every species for regeneration or genetic modification to create animals and plants that could adapt to various conditions on earth. A visual demonstration of vertical farming and utilising building facades to grow plants, trees to maintain a healthy echo-system, and drone taxis which are currently a reality and being tested in Dubai at the moment. Fascinating, and a little scary all at the same time. I think the most alarming thing we saw was an AI robot who was interacting with the audience. She pulled data from a phone and addressed a person by their name and welcomed them from their home town in England. She then did the same for a Spanish couple - addressing them in Spanish.

There is plenty more to explore in Dubai. Hopefully we will get a chance to do that at some stage. We are very pleased we stopped down and had a fabulous catch up with Trevor.

We left Dubai early Saturday morning and landed lunchtime in Glasgow. Maggie headed to the National Piping Centre for a practice, then a wander around Buchanan St shops, after which we met up with some kiwi pipers for a couple of quiet pints and a pizza. Photo credit below to the selfie stick!