By 9.30am we had had enough of looking at Dubai from above, and needed to get back to the ground so that we could eat.  Ok, mostly it was me who needed feeding but in fairness, we had lunch at 1pm the day before and nothing since!

The Boy very kindly agreed to pick us up, and come with us for breakfast of course!  It was very special to me as it was the first meal my best friend and my boy would be sitting down together to have.  Big thing.  Huge.  I’ve never been serious about anyone before to introduce them on Skype, let alone all of this!

When we walked out and I could see him standing there waiting for us, my heart skipped a beat.  We have had a few problems recently and he’d only just arrived back from yet another 2 weeks abroad.

Whatever else is happening, I still get excited butterflies when I see him.  Daft, but true.  Thought I would just throw that in there as a bit of a confession!

Off we pootled to the Westin Mina Seyahi for breakfast.  It’s one of our favourites so we had to take Albert there.  It’s AED 125 per person for breakfast buffet (including pork products), water, juices, teas and coffees.  Even better, it’s 241 in The Entertainer!

There is now going to be some delicious photos now in order to show you how good it is!

The boys went off for a smoke break and never returned.  I had a little bit more bacon, or cheese and bread, well ok it was a combination of both, and headed out to find them.  I found them deep in conversation and just stood to watch for a while.  They were, against the odds, getting on really well.  It was heartwarming to see.

Given the fact they were getting on, I decided it was time for our first group selfie!  A historic moment!  After that I just had to sit in a heap and smoke for a while so I could digest a little bit of the obnoxiously huge breakfast I had just stuffed, before setting out into the sun.  It was a ridiculously hot day!

After all the digestion there was a photo call on the beach.  Following the pitiful attempt at proving we were in the water on Kite Beach the other day (here), we tried again with much better results.  Day light does wonders for photos!!

What you don’t see when you are looking out over the ocean to The Palm is the incredible skyline behind you.  It’s the start of the Marina, and not long after, JBR.  The buildings up this end of town are all tall and are packed so closely together, it gives you a very unique view of another part of the city.

You can also see one of the yacht clubs from the beach.  It’s great, except every now and again the noise pollution from the on board parties.  Its not too bad when they are just passing to park, but annoyingly it appears to be a stretch of water that people just seem to moor up at and crank the volume.  Grr.

Don’t even get me started on the jet-skis.  That can be for another day!

Not entirely sure how impressed Albert will be with this following photo, but it made me laugh at the time and each time I see it now!  We weren’t really very awake due to the aforementioned 4hrs of sleep, so when we had to wash the sand off our feet, he got the wrong button and soaked himself!  It was more the little yelp that went with it, but The Boy and I were absolutely crying!!

When we had dried off a little, it was time for the next step of our adventuring… JBR and the Marina!

JBR is short for Jumeirah Beach Residence, and that’s the giant sand coloured towers along the beach front.  It was totally THE place to live when I first moved here.  You couldn’t get an apartment along here for a reasonable price.  It is a lovely area to live with so much to… but maybe a bit too much for the road system to take now.  I could not live with traffic the way it is down here at rush hour.

It does make for a lovely place to take a walk around though.  I think, for future reference, that the walks should be an evening or winter thing!  We were so hot walking through that I don’t even have words.

There are a couple of cool art projects that have popped up since I was last here so that was fantastic to see…

There is also a myriad of cafes and restaurants long the front, more so now they have opened the beach plaza.  I heard someone say that now there is approx. 400 restaurants to choose from along JBR, inclusive of those in the hotels.  It actually wouldn’t surprise me.  There is everything from Starbucks to local food.  You can get ice cream in the shop next door to your special fried rice.  You can also get a beer in one of the many licenced bars in the hotels.  Well, we could had it not been pre lunch time!

The newest excitement is Fuzziwigs, a sweet shop from the US.  As you may know, I have a bit of a legendary sweet tooth, met and matched only by my mother and The Boy.  I thought I needed to pop in and buy him a nice sweet treat to say thank you for coming back later to pick us up.

We walked in and despite being completely ignored by the staff (totally disproving their social media claims and photos to be the most welcoming place on the strip), I thought I had entered sweetie heaven!

By the time I walked to the counter, I was convinced it was heaven!

Sadly this is where the photos end.  I was a little unwell after this.  Not for the reasons you suspect….

I waited patiently for an age for the guy behind the counter to finish serving his infuriatingly indecisive customers so that I could ask which of the samples had nuts in.  I have a very bad nut allergy.  All nuts from peanuts to, and as a rarity, coconut.  Pretty much everything in between too.

Apparently the guy didn’t quite get the theory that peanut butter is made from peanuts and that peanuts are nuts. Grr.

Thankfully it was a dear little piece, no more than a 5mm square.  I rinsed my mouth out and took my medication, and thankfully it went no further.  Neither did we really.  That had finished the mornings adventuring.

I was so, so mad.  Not because they could have killed me (although that bothered me a bit later), but because we had only one weekend and their stupidity took away precious time that could have been spent adventuring and showing Albert lots of different aspects of this amazing city in which I live.

I also didn’t get any sweet treats for later.  I wouldn’t dare get anything there now.  That really pissed me off!!!