livin' the high life

the view down my street- SZB

After 2.5 months of living in a hotel/apartment (and enjoying the daily housekeeping, breakfast, pool towels, etc.), I've finally moved into my Dubai digs for real. I have a 2 bedroom apartment on the
14th floor of the 54 story tall Manazel al Safa building. My building is located on Sheik Zayed Blvd (SZB)- the main 10 lane highway through the middle of the city and the road that you take to Abu Dhabi. The metro parallels SZB and I'm between the stop for an area called Business Bay and the Dubai Mall stop. I'm living amongst superlatives. The mall is the world's largest (based on total area) and houses the Dubai Aquarium which boasts the world's largest acrylic panel for viewing the big tank (who knew Guinness would certify such

the acrylic panel! colored bit are reflections of the candy store sign

random things?) right across from the world's largest candy store, Candylicious. The mall is also connected to the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. I've now got with me the world's cutest globe trotting cat (Guinness has yet to certify him, but I know it's so) after he did a stint at my sister's, my parents', my aunt's and my colleague's homes, not to mention the layover at the pet hotel in Frankfurt. Shipping a cat around the world may put me in the ranks of the world's most frivolous, but having him here is pretty great.

I'm second building from the left.

I took a walk around my new neighborhood last night. I used the metro station pedestrian overpass to cross the highway out in front to see what's across the street. There are a few luxury car showrooms, a men's thawb/ thobe shop and tailor (also called dish dashes or kanduras, they are the sharp white robes commonly worn by Arabic men), a hotel and a Baskin Robbins and Dunkin Donuts. That side of the street has some tallish buildings (maybe 10-20 stories) but nothing like my side of the street. Over here though, I noticed something kind of crazy: between these big, sleek towers, there's sand lots. Along the smaller access road running parallel to SZB there are some sidewalks, but then between one building and the next, unlike in NYC or Chicago, for example, there's empty space and non-paved space. I even noticed a couple of scraggly trees just hangin' in there like they did when this was a patch of desert, between two buildings next to mine. I park, usually, in a sandy empty lot between my building and the next because my spot in the parking garage is on the 10th floor and all that spiraling up and down is a pain and makes me queasy.

My apartment is pretty empty- though I'm planning to do something about that this weekend- and has

from the front door looking into the living/dining room

amazing views. I realized the other day that I've never actually lived higher than the 2nd floor anywhere. I'll share a few apartment pictures but will hold off and post a more complete tour of the place after I get some more furniture.

butternut and i on the couch reflected

bedroom 2- the fishbowl!