More Fun in Dubai

I mentioned that we were on winter break, and it turned out to be a looooooong one for us. The kids' last day of school in Katy was December 1st and they weren't scheduled to start school here in Dubai until January 7th. Add to that the fact that I was without a driver's license for most of December, and you can imagine that we were a little stir crazy during the month.

During the slow pace of the winter break, we tried to take advantage of the downtime by visiting some local spots and enjoying family time. Many of our day trips consisted of trips to local malls. I had been told before moving here that most people spend their days at the malls due to the intense heat during the summer. Of course, the weather in Dubai right now is amazing and beautiful, but we found ourselves visiting the malls because they were an easy stop with several attractions to see and visit.

One of our favorite new malls (I find myself saying that a lot, ha!) is Dubai Festival City. It's on the side of town near the airport, so it's a bit further from our villa. We visited this mall because we needed to make a stop at the Ikea store for some game room furniture, but we ended up loving the mall for the other features as well. The kids discovered this indoor play area called Oasis which was basically a gigantic ball pit with slides, and both kids had a blast in there.

Can you spot them?!

Of course, we love to check out the array of restaurants available at each mall. It's always exciting to see ones we recognize from back home, especially when they turn out to be our favorites. We discovered yet another Texas Roadhouse at the Dubai Festival City mall, hence the reason why it became one of our favorite malls, ha! We all did the happy dance to enjoy this unexpected surprise.

Right outside the main restaurant area was a big boardwalk area overlooking multiple waterways with giant fountains and a Ferris wheel. I didn't manage to get any photos but I learned that there is a nightly show there called IMAGINE with fountains, lights, and music. It's a popular spot to have dinner at one of the many restaurants overlooking the shows every evening. We're hoping to see it one of these days.

On another day out and about, the kids and I wanted to take Jeff with us to see the Jumeirah Beach Residence area that we had enjoyed so much earlier in the month. I'm a broken record talking about the amazing weather here, but it's simply GORGEOUS and therefore a perfect time to be outside. The JBR walkway was all decorated for Christmas as well as for the big Dubai Shopping Festival event, so it was fun to walk around and take it all in. We also couldn't wait to show Jeff the fun spinning chairs, and sure enough, he really liked them too! And a trip to JBR would never be complete for us without a stop at Fuzziwig's Candy Factory. Yum!

One of the kids' Christmas gifts was the game Dubai Billionaire, which is almost exactly like Monopoly but using UAE landmarks, neighborhoods, and terminology. We have had a lot of fun playing the game now that we're learning more about the areas of the city.

Another activity we took advantage of during winter break was the local cinema. We love seeing movies and it's no different here. I noticed right away that the movie rating system is different here. Movies like Wonder that were rated PG back in the States are rated PG-13 here, and movies like Jumanji that were PG-13 back home are PG-15 here. You also will have Arabic and French subtitles in the movies here even though the movie itself is in English.

Our closest movie theater is at a big mall near us called Ibn Battuta. It's a really neat mall (yes, I know, yet another mall!) because it's divided into courts based on different countries -- Egypt, China, Tunisia, Persia, etc. The China Court has the movie theater, most of the big restaurants, and even a Chuck E. Cheese. Kaitlynn and I visited Ibn Battuta one day during winter break without Connor and we really enjoyed the Christmas decorations as well as discovering some of our favorite stores.