The final leg of the Big Adventure

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We arrived in Dubai before 5am on 5 July and had to wait an hour or so for Andrew to arrive from Auckland.  Luckily we had some time as we had to get from terminal 1 to terminal 3.  Once we'd met him (so nice to see him again - and he seemed quite pleased to see us too!) we caught the metro to the nearest station to the apartment we'd rented.  It's like the Singapore metro in that it's so clean and efficient and reasonably priced.  It's also a driverless train.  A short taxi ride from the station took us to the apartment block.
We knew we had to wait for several hours before gaining entry to the apartment as check in wasn't until 3pm and we were there by 8.30am.  The swimming pool opened at 11am so were were able to sit under umbrellas and cool off in the pool (the weather was much hotter than south east Asia and still quite humid).  Carol and Andrew went for a walk along the beach but soon returned as it was so hot!
We finally got in to the apartment and made ourselves at home.  It wasn't large but had everything we needed including a washing machine.  Unfortunately that was not working and despite phone calls we were unable to use it during our stay (an email of complaint was quickly sent to the company once we were home!)

On our first day in Dubai we booked a Desert Safari but the chap who picked us up was late and then faffed around so much that we gave up and walked away from it.  Instead we went out for an evening meal.  Our tradition (from when Andrew was quite little) has always been to have an 'end of expedition meal'.  It just meant this meal was a couple of days before the end of the expedition!
The next day we managed to book the Desert Safari with another company and had a good late afternoon and evening on that (dune bashing in a 4x4, sand boarding, camel riding, henna painting, BBQ, belly dancing etc).

We walked in the intense heat to get a photo of the Burj al Arab and we visited 2 of the Malls - Mall of the Emirates complete with its indoor ski slope, and Dubai Mall complete with huge aquarium, ice rink,.  Outside Dubai Mall are fountains which 'play' every 30 minutes from 7pm.  We thought Disney was good but this was far slicker.




We'd booked tickets to go up the Burj Khalifa which is the tallest building in the world.  This is accessed from Dubai Mall.  Unfortunately visibility for the whole time we were in Dubai wasn't great so we didn't get very good views.
The rest of our time in Dubai was spent relaxing in the apartment and around the pool.  We went in the sea early (8am) in the morning as it was far too hot after that.  (Carol and Andrew went in it on the second day and couldn't believe how hot the water was - not just warm, but HOT)
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Finally, Saturday 9 July arrived and it was the day that had seemed so far away when we left home - the last day of our Big Adventure! We were at the airport early as Andrew's plane left 2 hours before our's.  On the flip side he had to wait for 2 hours for us at Heathrow! The coach to Southampton was 30 minutes late but finally we were there.  Julia met us (with a bag of food to keep us going) and took us home - it was exactly 31 weeks since we'd set off!

 Here's how the garden looked when we got back!