Emirates Palace Iftar

So it's been a little while since I've posted.  Things have been really busy the past 1.5 weeks, so both Paul and I have just been exhausted by the time we would get home.  We've mainly been buying appliances/furniture, moving into our apartment, and been car searching/buying.  Since it was Ramadan, we couldn't really start any shopping until 8:30pm, so we weren't getting home until 1ish.  But that is all over now that it's Eid.  We learned around 10pm on Wednesday night that Eid was going to start on Friday.  Unfortunately for us that meant we had to go to work on Thursday.  It's definitely an adjustment to have to wait until 10pm the night before a possible holiday to find out if you're going to get it off or if you'll have to work.  I kind of respect that about their culture here in that they haven't let that go.  On the other hand, it is a bit of a pain in terms of trying to schedule vacations etc, and I am not sure that I am convinced that it actually has a lot to do with moon as it does to maximizing vacation days for the locals (the govt. agencies had already declared that their employees would have Wed & Thurs off no matter what, and then if Eid was on Thurs, they would have to work Sunday, if it started on Friday, the get Sunday off....so i think the declaration of Eid was a bit of a conspiracy, but there's not much I can do about that).  Also, Paul started work on Wednesday!  So now we should really starting to get settled into some sort of rhythm.

Another reason I haven't blogged much lately is that, honestly, I just hate writing.  So this post is going to mainly be photos from our Iftar at Emirates Palace which Paul had mentioned in one of his posts.

Emirates palace is really a beautiful building with very nice landscaping, etc.  We arrive a little early per some peoples' suggestions so that we could walk around and take some photos.

The inside of Emriates palace is really beautiful.  This is the central lobby.

Another central lobby photo

There are quite a few areas where you can just sit and relax.

They had a couple of huge, intricate tapestries in one of the foyer areas.

They had a cart sitting out with about 25 different containers of tea.
I love how so many people drink tea out here :)

This was in the tent entrance hall to our iftar tent.

Our Iftar tent.  I've definitely never seen a "tent" that was so nice before.

Part of the iftar buffet

Emirates palace at night as we drove away with full tummies.