DUBAI PART TWO

I woke up on my birthday with an incredibly sore head.

My mum had sent over my birthday cards, so once I'd popped a paracetamol and downed a bottle of water, I curled up in bed and opened my cards from my mum and dad, brother and sister in law, and a couple of fabulous friends who had sent cards to the desert in time for my birthday.

Jemma had naughtily asked the hotel to organise flowers and a cake, so whilst she was getting ready, these arrived at the room as a lovely surprise.

My mum had sent over a beautiful necklace that I wore to brunch, and Jemma had naughtily bought me a gorgeous Ciate nail polish and Victorias Secret perfume, and my other flat mate Sara had sent over possibly the best t shirt iv ever seen...

Still with sore heads, we got ourselves ready and hopped in a cab to the Atlantis, where we would be celebrating my birthday at the Saffron brunch.

The Atlantis is quite spectacular. None of the photos I have really do it justice, and I had to wander quite far away to actually fit the magnificent building in a photo!

My best friends little girl described the photo as a Disney palace, and she wasn't wrong! Except far more adult friendly!

Our meeting point was the Aquarium (yes, a giant aquarium in the hotel, as you do)

We met up with Kayleigh, Nabs, Ben, and two of his friends, and joined the enormous queue for brunch at Saffron.

I always thought brunch in Doha was great. It's the thing to do when there are a bunch of you of work on a Friday (although that's pretty rare given the nature of our work). I'd heard brunch in Dubai, and in particular Saffron, was a crazy affair but I literally was not prepared for it.

It was a Doha brunch on steroids - in Doha you only get a choice of wine, beer or bubbles (although some places offer a choice of 1 or 2 cocktails that you can have throughout the meal) but at Saffron, nothing was off limits.

I'm talking every single spirit under the sun, beers, wine, bubbles, cocktails (there was a stall serving up strawberry daiquiris), Pimms (a whole stall serving Pimms!) a jaeger bomb station, a station serving up pineapple with syringes full of alcohol that you inject into the fruit before you eat it, and last but not least, whole melons carved out and filled with vodka for your whole table to enjoy

Needless to say, it got messy very quickly.

Then there was the food. Stations for sushi, pasta, salad, roast dinner, burgers, Chinese, Indian, every possible cuisine you could think of.

We ate, drank, and chatted, and as the afternoon went on, Saffron turned into one giant party. The DJ was blasting out songs that everyone was singing along to, and by 3 o clock everybody was up dancing.

So much fun!

4 o clock signals the end of brunch, and everyone bundles on to mini buses to a club called N'Dulge, which is also at the Atlantis.

Feeling it was far too early in the day to be clubbing, we made our way to Naisimi beach, a chilled out beach bar at the hotel.

Peach belinis and water all round, we relaxed in the sun to a chilled out soundtrack, courtesy of the DJ behind us.

Groups of friends around us chatted and smoked shisha, while we sat and nursed our food babies and tried to process what we had just experienced!

As the sun began to set, we caught a second wind and made our way to N'Dulge, stopping to snap some snazzy cars that were parked at the beach bar along the way

 

We partied until about 9pm (hardcore!) and then headed back to the hotel, in desperate need of painkillers, water, and my bed!!

All in all a very fun and drunken birthday although I was a very poorly girl that night, and asleep by 11pm!

 

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