November 5th: Lazy Beach Day

We had originally planned to spend Saturday morning back out in the desert, driving around in dune buggies, but about a week before our trip Mark took a nasty spill on his little electric bike and banged up his face pretty bad. One of the small bones around his eye was actually broken (don't worry - he's fine now!), and while he reeeeally wanted to go out in the dune buggies, we figured it probably wouldn't be the best idea. That meant that we wound up with a completely free day. Megan had the day off from work, too, so we all slept in (which was fantastic and much-needed). We all eventually got up, had breakfast and coffee, and decided to spend the afternoon at the beach.

A little bit of driving later, we were at Kite Beach Jumeira. It was gorgeous, and the water was really nice and warm.

It had a neat view of the Burj Al Arab in the distance, too. We hung out at the beach for a while; it was pretty neat to be swimming in the Persian Gulf. Mark and Marcus swam way out and said they saw fish jumping around.

After a while we went back to the towels and started to pack up. That's when Marcus realized that he had accidentally taken his car keys swimming. And he has one of those cars where you don't actually need a key, you just have the little electronic keychain thing and a start button. Oops.

At least the view from the parking spot was pretty! It took a little while, but Marcus found a way to get the car started. It beeped at him almost the entire drive back to the villa, but we made it back safely. It was getting a bit late in the day, so we all grabbed showers, then went out for dinner. We found a good restaurant near the beach and ate outside before walking down to the Ritz Carlton to check out their bar.

 Their bar is called the Library, and it's pretty fancy. We grabbed some comfy couches and ordered a couple drinks. Mine had some kind of frothy topping that tasted like toasted marshmallows, which was pretty neat. Mark found some whiskey that he hadn't tried before, so we he was pretty happy, too.

At one point Mark left to use the bathroom. He was gone for a little while, and when he did come back he was carrying a small pink box. Turns out...

...it was full of macarons! He had walked past a little bakery area and had stopped to admire the display when the lady offered him a free macaron. He told her that he didn't really eat them but that I loved them, and she gave him an entire little box for free! That was really neat.   :)

We finished up at the Library, walked back to the car, and drove back to the villa. None of us were really tired yet...

...so we wound up drinking wine and having a game night. I had never played Smart Ass before but it was a lot of fun. We played a few rounds, polished off a bottle of wine, then eventually went to bed. It had been nice to have a lazy day to recharge!