Dubai Adventure

I have been meaning to share some pics from our recent trip to Dubai for a while. But... I came back exhausted and then who knew Christmas could come at us quicker than one would like! Apologies for the blurry selfie above but I love how naive I am in this pic... Jasper and I just before take off, very excited about our trip, just the two of us for a 14 hour flight to see my sister and her husband. My advice for travelling solo with a 13 month old.... DONT!!! I tried every trick I knew of. We paced the aisles of the plane, I threw toys at him, attempted to get him to watch a bit of tv, let him crawl on the floor. Nothing worked and the further away from Brisbane we got the more overtired and aggravated we became. However we survived, we got there and luckily for me I had an Aunty on arrival who was desperate for some one on one time with my crazy kid.

Dubai, what an amazing city and if you have kids there is no shortage of fun things to do! Most of which are in the biggest shopping malls you have ever seen. Fancy a spot of ice skating or skiing in between shopping? Most of these activities were a bit old for our Jasper but he did enjoy the amazing Aquarium at Dubai Mall, which I believe is the largest indoor aquarium in the world. Generally anything in Dubai is the biggest and largest in the world. This aquarium absolutely fascinated Jasper and I saw a lot of older kids absolutely have a ball!

  

Despite being in desert there are so many beautiful places to wander, shop, eat and bask in. My advice though is take a long top or cardigan for when you are indoors, these people LOVE their aircon. I guess coming from Australia I am used to the heat and yes it is ridiculously hot but I absolutely froze sometimes when we were inside! Sorry for the odd travel tip!

We also joined all the other tourists and went to visit the Gold and Spice souks. Definitely worth a visit if you are travelling there for the first time. Perhaps you'd be interested in a trolley of coconuts?!

Top travel tips for families planning on a trip to Dubai:

1. You will find the shopping malls less crowded when they first open in the morning which is perfect for kids. Locals tend to come out late afternoon and shop late. And, it seems they love to hang out at the malls to escape the heat so it can get busy. Going earlier will mean you'll avoid the queues for all the attractions. Also we tended to go out for dinner earlier which again meant we avoided the rush. 

2. Dubai is actually really spread out across the coast line. Choose a hotel that is fairly central to the mall and make sure they have a transfer or shuttle service to all the sights. Not all are close by and still worth a visit. It helped that my sister had a car to ferry us around.

3. With so many expats living in Dubai you can rest assured you will find most comforts from home readily available. Supermarkets stock items from UK, USA and Australia.

4. You can generally hire or get the hotel to supply cots. I would recommend taking a car seat and a cheap stroller. My sister said that there was a promotion recently on the radio to encourage parents to put there kids in a car seat. I kid you not we saw children jumping on the back seat in a car as we were doing over 100km/h on the highway. A stroller is also a must, those malls are far too big and you will get too excited and want to shop for hours. 

5. Again with the cardigan, I'm not kidding you will freeze otherwise. 

6. The last time I came to Dubai was before Tim and I had Jasper so it was a much different experience. This time around we ate in family friendly restaurants - Jamie Olivers Italian for example was a perfect choice for Jasper. My pick of attractions for kids are the ice skating and ski slope at the malls, the aquarium at Dubai Mall and Atlantis. If you have older kids the Desert Safari tour run by Arabian Adventures is fantastic.