Because I lack creativity

I’m finally writing about the safari we did at the end of April when my sister-in-law came to visit us. There are a lot of different companies that arrange desert safaris here in Dubai, and after reading the reviews I decided to go with the Arabian Nights Tours —we also had an Entertainer coupon (buy one get one free). Originally it was 300 dirhams, but we were 4 people and with the coupons we paid 150 dirhams per person.

It works like this: The car comes and picks you up at around 15:30, and goes directly to the desert. You first do the “desert dune bashing”, where you basically go up and down the sand dunes at high speed with an expert driver in a Toyota Land Cruiser, and it gets quite jumpy :). Then you make a couple of stops in the desert to take photos. Finally you move to the campsite which is built in the bedouin style, where you can do camel riding, try on local clothing, get henna tattoos, enjoy a belly dancing show and eat barbecue.

This is the henna design I had —it came off in a week or so:

And here’s the camel riding part of the safari (I’m on the first camel from the left, with my husband!):

We enjoyed it a lot, but I’ve heard others who thought it was boring. I guess I like touristy stuff and I do believe that if you come to Dubai, this is a must. I’d recommend the company, Arabian Nights Tours, as well, and when we have guests over, we’ll probably arrange the same tour again!

I didn’t bring my camera to the safari since my sister-in-law already had one, so the following photos are taken by her.

My husband and I wanted to go to Nobu for years now, but somehow never got the chance. Finally last weekend, we decided it was time and went to the Atlantis Hotel located at the Palm. Well, we also had an Entertainer coupon (when you order a main course, you get another one for free). 

It was one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to. Honestly, some of the dishes were so delicious that I wanted to go there the next day as well!

Since it was our first time, we ordered a lot of food to taste a variety of dishes. With the help of 130 dirhams of discount from the coupon, we paid 750 dirhams, which is around 205 dollars. It was worth every penny. 

Here’s what we ordered:

Drinks:

Coconut & apple lemonade and Grapefruit martini

Food:

Tuna tempura roll

Crispy rice with spicy yellowtail

Wagyu gyoza (dumplings)

Black cod yuzu miso

Toban yaki - Beef fillet

Nobu cheesecake

Selection of mochi ice cream

Nobu chocolate (complementary)

Listing all these food made me realize that we ended up eating A LOT —but, I would definitely do it again :)

The highlights of the night for me were the crispy rice with spicy yellowtail, the black cod yuzu miso and the Nobu cheesecake. I also thought the presentation of the crispy rice was very creative. The black cod was so tender that we could barely hold it with chopsticks and it literally melted in your mouth. Apart from the food, the drinks were very tasty as well. Apparently they just added the grapefruit martini to the menu and it was a great choice for me —the taste of the alcohol was not overpowering, and it had a perfect balance of sweet and tart.

So, I guess everyone already knows what a great restaurant Nobu is, but you should definitely definitely try it if you haven’t yet!