Our alarm goes off at 4:15 in the morning, I am confused as to why Antoine’s alarm had gone off when we agreed to wake up at 4:30. His excuse was so that he can snooze it. I kicked him out of the room and we made our way to the very empty tube station. I had my 40-liter backpack behind me and my little 15-liter backpack in front of me whilst Antoine struggled with two filled-to-the-rim duffle bags and his tech backpack with all his cameras and accessories. Slowly but surely we get to Gatwick airport 3 and a half hours early, since there was a slight problem with online check-in. We get through all the airport security smoothly and grab breakfast at Jamie’s Italian in the airport. After breakfast, we hop on the plane to Dubai. A little nap was taken on this flight from both of us. In Dubai, we have a 7-hour layover in which we decided to take a slight detour to the Dubai Mall.
It was my first time in Dubai, and the best way I could describe it was a “classier Vegas”. The Dubai mall is the granddaddy of the Bellagio and Caesars Palace. The first thing you see when you get into the city are all the lights and the L.A. Like traffic and freeways. The first thing you see in the mall is a giant aquarium and a ceiling full of stars. Dubai has everything from LA to London, California Pizza Kitchen, Tim Hortons, Coldstone, PF Changs, Ben’s Cookies, and so much more. It was so overwhelming. One of my friends from back home asked me to get him one of the fancy cars in Dubai, so I went to Hamley’s Toy Store and got him a Hot Wheels car. Turns out, everything in Dubai is about London priced, not as expensive as we thought it was going to turn out.
Antoine had bought tickets to go up the giant tower a few days before so we walked through Fashion Hall and went up 124 floors in under 60 seconds. The view was incredible, and we weren’t even at the top of the building. We looked down, and there was the rest of the city, we looked up and there was the rest of the building staring down at us. Even the restrooms were incredibly “extra”.
To get back to the airport, we needed to get a taxi, and in order to get a taxi, we had to go to the taxi-hire part of the parking lot. Before we could get down to that floor, a taxi pulled up and said that he wasn’t busy. We got into that taxi and realized that he might not be a legitimate taxi driver. His meter wasn’t on and he kept giving us reasons to give him more money. In the end, he charged us slightly more than the taxi to leave the airport, but we still got out of there as soon as possible.
While waiting at the Dubai airport, I had asked Antoine, what if we regret this trip after, he doubts that we will. It still hasn’t hit us that we are partaking in the Rickshaw Run and I think it’s because we don’t even know how to prepare for something this extreme, much less how to feel about it, we have no idea what to expect or how to empathize with the adventure. Hopefully, we can get as much rest as we can and be prepared for literally anything.