Donna's favourite part of the zoo-her ice cream!

Al Ain Visit

The UAE has just had National Day and the second Eid a week apart, which left Ryan with lots of needed time off! We had alot of fun having him at home, and took oneday with the Mitchels to visit Al Ain. It was a great day out!

We first took a drive up Jebel Hafeet, which has been voted the "best driving road" by some (visit http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do/Features/articleId=109278 if anyone's interested-this is for you Con and Angus!), but on which I was not let loose and had to take it easy, as I had my dear husband and child in the car, and another kid in my tummy! But it was good anyway, the rock formations were fascinating, and the views brilliant!

We then took the long windy road back down to the Zoo...

The Zoo was really good, it's been years since I've been to a zoo! I was not expecting to see anything "big", so was very surprised to see lion, tiger, leopard, cheetah, gorilla, and uranatangs there, with a whole lot of other "lesser" things like giraffe, zebra, meercats, flamingos, chimps, etc, etc. Donna had such a jol, referring to the animals by their first names, ie Mr Alex, Gloria, Maddy, Melvin, King Louie, Bagheera, etc (for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, you need to watch Jungle Book and Madagascar carefully again, you'll also need to catch up on most of the Disney movies if you want a conversation with Donna to make any sense to you!)

Once again, we were amazed at our Lord's creation, from perfectly parallel rock layers, to a wide variety of stunning animals, of which we only saw a few, we were just so thankful!

Dubai Rugby 7s

We went to the Dubai Rugby Sevens, and as always , it was so much fun! Unfortunately we couldn't go on the Saturday, so we didn't see the Boks take the trophy, but we did see them annihilate the Arabian Gulf team! We also witnessed Zimbabwe score (once!) against the All Blacks, but from there it was pretty much a slaughtering for them! The other games were also exciting, as was the entertainment, cheerleaders, atmosphere and a Dancing Donna-after all that's what live rugby is all about!

Our Catamaran Trip

We finally got to go on our Catamaran trip and it was really fantastic!!!

We met at the Marina one fine Saturday morning, when the Catamaran was experiencing no technical difficulties, the weather was perfect and the New Atlantis hotel was not having their $20 000 000.00 opening, prohibiting all boats, catamarans, yachts and other floating devises from going around the Palm (these were all previous reasons for postponing the trip!), but the weather was so good, we were thankful for the delay!

We were taken out around the Palm, past the Atlantis, which was very impressive, and anchored real close to the Burj al Arab for lunch, a swim and a massage (life doesn't get more relaxing than that!!). We then took a lazy trip back-totally relaxed, amazed and thankful!

It was an afternoon that we will remember for a very long time!