Marhabaan Dubai

Sometimes in life you are lucky. Sometimes you get to do what you love. And in the rarest of cases you even get paid for it. 

That happened to me in 2019 when for a little while I got paid to travel the world. Granted, I had to do actual work while visiting the countries. But in the span of 9 months I got to pretty much take one spin around the globe.

But all good stories start at the beginning. And ours is: Dubai

The journey started on a true high already. To be honest, although I love travelling I have never made it further last than Turkey. So starting this adventure in Emirate‘s business class was a way of travelling I had never experienced before. I had also never travelled in business class before. In retrospect I started with by far the best travelling experience. Emirates truly knows how to make you feel special.

I arrived in the early hours of the morning and fell straight into bed. So I didn’t really notice what a special view my hotel room offered. It was only after waking up that I realized that I was looking directly at the Burj Khalifa.

As this was very much a business trip, we spent the daylight hours in one of the many office buildings. But being adamant to make the most of our time here, we defeated jetlag and exhaustion from a long day's work, and made way to the mall of Dubai. 

To this day I am not sure whether the layout was unfortunately designed or the product of evil genius. The mall is the biggest labyrinth I have ever seen and even with information points everywhere it was hard to navigate. The sheer size also meant that the stores we wanted to go to where at times a mile apart. 

After what must have been at least a 10k we finally decided to sit down and eat. By pure chance we chose A fantastic Turkish restaurant: Bosporus. Located at the lower floor, they have an outside terrace and the most flavourful food. We got the starter platter to share and different mains to fellow that up. Everything we ordered was simply amazing. 

Naturally, we returned to the hotel complete full and rather happy. 

The next day was spent much like the first in that we did the work we actually came for. That evening we were invited to a Lebanese restaurant by the beach. We decided to go there early o enjoy the shore and the imminent sunset. This turned out to be a wonderful idea. It might be just me but even five minutes by the seaside already feel like a full vacation day.

We once again were spoilt when it came to our dinner. The restaurant was located at La mer beach and once again had the most flavourful, delicious menu. We ordered for everyone to share and had the most delightful evening.

On our final day we managed to escape the office a little bit earlier. With all the things to do in Dubai there had only been one thing on our mind since the first visit to the Mall of Dubai. And so, like the true tourists we were we made our way to IHOP. And I am not ashamed to admit that after years of abstinence tasting true American pancakes was a little bit like heaven on a plate.

Turns out my first trip to Dubai was a true culinary rollercoaster. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.