Weekend Notes

Spent the weekend with few friends who live in Abu Dhabi. They had come down to Dubai.

FRIDAY
Started the day with a lavish spread of breakfast, rounded up with a giant mug of cappuccino, a cheese brioche to accompany it, and lemon crust chocolate cake. This was just the post breakfast coffee. Couple of hours later, all of the us, the gang at Dubai, were feeling famished. The food court at the top of world’s biggest mall (Dubai Mall), was the recluse for us ravenously hungry souls.
Now lunch comprised of subs, wraps, coke all of which but the sub was pathetic.
Left with a bad taste in mouth, the girls wanted to try out the chocolate bar. After walking around for kilometers (remember this is world’s biggest mall), and asking the information desk at every juncture, we figured out that the chocolate bars were in the process of “opening-soon”. After desperately looking for chocolate, and finding only the marshmallow shops selling some tidbit was quite annoying. I was fantasizing about the chocolate fountains, mousse, cakes, pastries, dark, rich melting chocolate, chocolate fondue, hard chocolate, milk chocolate, mint chocolate, and what not.
So finally we located a coffee bar, which had some decent looking chocolate pastries.
The girls settled in for the chocolate mousse cake, and the guy chose black forest cake.

Now I don’t like black forest cake. It has very little chocolate, and cherry taste super cedes the chocolate taste. I guess I only like the chocolate curls that are used for garnishing the top. I like the bitter sweet taste of dark chocolate. The more bitter it is the better it tastes to me. But at this place, it was the best back forest pastry I had ever had. It melted in mouth, had a richer taste and the after taste wasn’t too sweet either. The look of the pastry was different too, with rich coffee like, and not the usual dark cocoa and ice vanilla combination. The chocolate mousse had to be sinfully good so much so that, the dear friend blurted out with her eyes closed in blissful state, savoring the melting cocoa in her moth, “No man is ever going to make us feel this good”. “Ummmm”, I reciprocated. The poor guy who is married to this friend simply looked on….nothing replaces chocolates for chocoholic girls 

After the choc-escapade, we wanted to do the Ice Rink. Now this Ice Rink is the biggest one to be put in a shopping mall (yeah you got it right, everything is BIG here). So this place is like Olympic sized, with audience seating as well. After standing there and waiting for our turn to go in and start the Zip-Slip-Thud process, we realized that we were underdressed. People already in had sweaters/ jackets on with gloves and caps. Most of them were European expats, and to us if they were this cold, we would soon become permanent ice hockey goaltender in there without our protective gear, and no woolen clothes. So we didn’t do it. We have planned it for the next weekend.

The next ting we did was to get lost in a toy store. I remembered my childhood days in India. We NEVER had any of toys, leave alone gadgets and all. I remember my aunt bringing me some toys and play sets from UK, whenever she would come in (which used to happen not so regularly). She got me my first Barbie when I had graduated to playing serious games in life ;). So all three adults were happy reliving the childhood fantasies. We played Wii tennis too, so we tried everything there. I was looking for some Wii sports CDs to gift it to husband dear who is sports fanatic. Spotted a FIFA 9, and am still looking for some better deals.

Next was supper, as it was too early for dinner. I didn’t have any, tasted some off the friends’ plates while they were having theirs. Post supper, more of mall exploration. We had been going around the entire place, and we still hadn’t covered most of it!

We decided to call it a day, and came back. The guys had already left. It was one of the most fabulous weekends in a long time. I got to spend some time with my girl-friend, doing window shopping, trying shades, looking at fabrics, jewellery, tasted some amazing food, chocolates. The perfect end to this was a good movie.

Looking forward to more weekends like this, while I am here.