Holiday weekend trip #Dubai #GetAway

Coming in to Dubai on the highway from Abu Dhabi

The second week of school ended with a 3 day weekend!

Holidays are an interesting thing here. Thursday the 21st was the Islamic New Year, but it was not "officially" named the holiday until Wednesday. Thus, the day off was expected but not officially declared by the government until Wednesday morning. Muslim holidays are determined by the position of the moon, as the Islamic calendar is a lunar one. Thus, until someone sees the moon, no holiday notice is issued.

Once the holiday is proclaimed, various ministries of the government declare a public holiday. The notices are posted in the papers like this one in the Gulf News.

For my holiday weekend I rested on Thursday then spent today in Dubai. I rode up with a friend who had business there for a few hours. She dropped me at a taxi and while she did her thing, I did some sightseeing.

First I went to the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. The best part of my visit wasn't the building, though; it was my brother.

My brother is fascinated with Dubai and the Burj Khalifa, so I texted him pictures. We are not that close, but I hoped this would be a topic we could connect on. I was right! It was the middle of the night for him, but he shot a text right back and we had a brief chat about my visit. This is the longest conversation I have had with him in years! Woohoo!!

Here are some of the highlights. It's easy to see why my brother is enamored. I went to some other places in Dubai, but I'll leave that for a second post.

From the cab. Not a great pic, but you can see how much taller the Burj is than anything else in Dubai.

A model and a timeline of the Burj Khalifa.