My wife showed amazing restraint since she waited until our second day in Dubai to go to the beach. At least I think it was the second day. I’m having trouble keeping it all straight — probably the latent effects of heat exhaustion. In any case, it was definitely our first trip to the water, no matter which day it actually happened.
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After a day at the beach, we spent the evening riding the rails.  Well, one rail — the Palm Monorail. Unfortunately, things get dark in Dubai early — the sun is going down at 6 and it’s usually dark by 8 — and we had a somewhat late start going there.  (In theory we were going there to see a large public aquarium, but my research didn’t show any such thing; our visit proved my research better than my wife’s information, but I didn’t gloat.  The night was also our first taxi ride through Dubai, and a ride on their monorail, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.  Even so, it would have been better to have left an hour earlier.
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The next day was the shopping day, the day we wandered the souks, ran into several “helpful” people wanting to sell us stuff, and when my wife bought a fur coat.  (Sorry, no images of the coat, she still needs to send me some.)  Read some more about the day here.
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