Long weekend

Dec 1-4 was our last long weekend for the year. The UAE's national day or formation day falls on Dec 2, and along with the weekend and the Commemoration Day on 1st, we got 4 days. This time I booked a staycation in Radisson Blu Al Ain in advance. 

Al Ain is the UAE's oasis or garden city with plenty of farms, both crop and dairy, and it is a pleasant and quiet town that is part of Abu Dhabi. 

My first trip to Al Ain was my MA classmates Miller and Maha, when the latter came down from Canada and wanted to see and shop around for 3 days. Miller treated us girls to a surprise trip to AA, where we stopped at Hili Mall before heading home. 

AA hotels are usually cheap but being holiday season, the rates were slightly high. But to our disappointment, we found it a dated hotel - dating back to 1969 - which reminded one of hotels in Malayalam movies of the 70s and 80s, according to Mira. To add insult to injury, despite booking a month in advance, they gave us 2 rooms in two different floors! The rooms thankfully were renovated and decent. The view of the hotel premises wasn't great but we could watch FIFA matches on a giant screen at an outdoor restaurant from our balcony (if not from the room TV). 

Ash enjoyed his time in the pool but lost his goggles. I tried the gym the next day, while we had to skip the tennis court as we didnt have the gear. Mira spent part of her time studying for her Accountancy exam, complaining half the time about the hotel and the city being boring. The glitz of Dubai is more her style. 

Food - both dinner and breakfast buffet - at Flavours was decent. We invited my Chandanapally neighbour Binu and wife for dinner, and it was fantastic to catch up with him and see his happiness. I was meeting his wife, a nurse at a local clinic, for the first time but she was easy going and there were no stilted conversations. We dropped them home, and they gave us drumstick leaves from the tree outside their villa/row house.

One problem with saying goodbye to people from your childhood days is that it makes you feel very sad the day after, as if some part of you has been lost.