Dubai Day 3

Today we went to Burj Kahlifa- the tallest building in the world. We

got to go up to the 125th floor (as far as you can go - there are 160 floors) and take in Dubai. It was great. This afternoon the kids swam, and while Mat was with them I went to the mall. And here is why - I have been in Switzerland for 8 months. Where there are no malls and no affordable clothing stores. I miss shopping. I miss talking to customer service in English who are not indifferent to me being there. It was quite the treat. Tonight we are relaxing and playing some board games.

We saw this on the metro.  Women and children don't HAVE to sit here, but Men are not allowed

 We are as high as we could go in Burj Kahlifa - and still had 35 floors above us!

 View from the 125th floor

 After we came back down, we went into the Dubai Mall.  IT was enormous - we could have been in there for days and still not seen everything

 Cool Fountain

 Outdoor fountain around Burj Kahlifa

 There is Burj Kahlifa from the outside

 Our souvenirs from the day

 Camel Milk Chocolate!

 Dubai coins.  They don't have any money amounts written on them, so we just started to refer to them by their pictures.  Today I am paying with deer, building, genie lamp

Day Two in Dubai

Day two in Dubai. Today we went to the beach and then to the pool. Kids swam for 6 hours, so they should sleep well tonight. Put our feet in the Persian Gulf - checked another body of water off our list! The water was warm, clear, and no waves, which was great.

 This was a place you could eat.  They strap you in on the ground and you get your food, and then you are lifted into the air.  And it spins!

 Kids collected some shells on the beach today.  And Finley got a rock

 How I plan to spend my time at the pool

 We saw quite a few para sailing folks over the ocean (Which is less than 100 yards away from where we are staying)

 Had to take a picture of Cainan in front of his favorite restaurant - Chili's - which was written here in Arabic

Dubai for Spring Break

The kids are on another 2 week break, but this time we have a vacation planned.  We have been looking forward to this break for awhile.  We had decided we wanted to take a basically relaxing, warm weather vacation this spring.  Break is a bit early (last week of March), so that wasn't easy to come by.

We had an overnight flight to Dubai and left the cold weather behind.  We arrived in 80 degree weather and beautiful sunshine and are excited to be in summer clothes for a week.  We are spending the week in a Condo in Jumeirah Beach (we love using Airbnb).  We passed tons of skyscrapers on our drive in from the airport. 

We were told by our driver from the airport that this is a good time to visit Dubai.  I guess it gets to be around 122 degrees F in the summer.  I cannot even imagine!

After we took a nap, we took the kids for a swim in the complex pool, picked up some groceries, and then went out to dinner.  My kids were very excited to see some of their favorite American restaurant chains.  Being in Switzerland has meant no eating out due to it being really expensive, so tonight we let them go to Chili's - a family favorite.

view from our balcony at the condo

 Dubai is in the United Arab Emirates Country - and this is their money

 Finley and Cainan in the pool

 View of part of the condo complex from the pool

 On our way to dinner.  We crossed over a small inlet where we saw a lot of yachts parked

 Looking back at our condo complex from across the water

 Dubai at night

Snow

It does snow a little bit in Basel.  Basel is the warmest city in all of Switzerland (even though it is in the north), but we do get our share of cold weather.

While the snow usually melts in less than a day, while it is around - it is very pretty!

Finley's First Time Skiing

Finley was on a school ski trip this past week. Each school takes a ski trip, and this is her week.  She was more excited than nervous.  The weekend before the trip, she and I went and rented her skis, and packed all of her equipment for this week long adventure.

Here she is getting ready to head out.  I had to take her to the Basel Train Station.  They are skiing here in Switzerland - about 2 hours away, and staying at the ski resort.

Her Principal was really great making sure Finley was well prepared for the trip.  Since she is legally blind, she needed to have a guide with her at all times.  By week's end, she was doing quite well on her own.

I am glad she had this opportunity.  I tend to worry about her more than the other two.  But she showed me that she can do anything her siblings can do.

It's The Little Things

Had lunch with the ladies in my German class today, and every bite was delicious. We went to a place in Basel called Xocolati (http://www.xocolatl-basel.ch/) and I had the best hot chocolate of my life. I had a chocolate that was milky and vanilla and sweet. Thick and rich and delicious. I also had delicious homemade soup (they told us they only make so many bowls of soup a day), orange cake, and a caffe latte. So so good. I can't wait to go back.

Foundation Beyeler Museum

Mat and I took a few hours this afternoon to visit the Foundation Beyeler Museum here in Riehen.  We only live about a 7 minute walk from this museum, and we feel pretty lucky about that.  It is an internationally renowned museum, and keeps a constant collection of Picasso, Matisse, Monet, etc. which are always fun to look at.

This month's artist for their revolving collection is Berlitz.  His art is.....weird.  All of it is painted upside down and it is all fingerpainted.  Very bizarre, and not our style.  But we enjoyed our afternoon looking around.

This is a Baselitz painting.  It was the okay-est one we saw

 Monet.  Always takes me back to visiting his house a few years ago in Paris

 I cannot remember the artist that painted this one, but we really liked it

 This one made us laugh.  This is a horse body without the head - stuck in the wall.  But that wasn't the best part.  The best part is that this was loaned to the museum from a private collection.  What person said "you know what is missing from my collection?  A headless horse"