Marco-YOLO

Dubai is a city I visit almost every year, sometimes more than once a year, and I’ve been going there for over two decades. During this time, the city has gone from a place to go to buy electronics cheaply to a place where the word cheap seems out of place.

In any case, the rapid infrastructure development and successful capture of the high-end tourism market has been impressive to watch. For a while it appeared the global financial crisis would make Dubai topple like a house of cards, and I thought I sensed some in the Western press relishing it based on the tone of some of the articles. But after 2008-2010 and a small bailout by Abu Dhabi, it seems Dubai is going to be fine. It’s probably stronger for the crisis because the excessive irrational exuberance of the old Dubai has been put in check because of it.

However, something new has emerged since 2012. It seems “black money” from Eastern Europe is increasingly coming to Dubai to be laundered. The size of the Eastern European contingent in the city has visibly grown, and I don’t know if it’s related, but I also saw prostitutes in virtually every hotel bar I visited, many of them Eastern European.

Home to UVA, Charlottesville is a large-ish college town surrounded by a multitude of smaller towns with their own personalities and good bed and breakfast options. Nearby Staunton boasts the world’s only recreation of Shakespeare’s indoor theatre, the Blackfriars Playhouse. Colleen and I have come here three times now, watching Titus Andronicus, Othello and Hamlet in that order. Staunton also hosts outdoor concerts, one of which we caught on our last visit, and features good dining options with an emphasis on organic and locally sourced foods.

Two other excursions we took near Charlottesville was watching a movie in a drive-in theatre, a first for me, and driving through Virginia Safari Park where we hand fed free-ranging camels, ostrich, llama, goats and deer as we drove through the 3-mile long safari park. The park also had a zoo-type section where the coolest animals were Bengal tigers, cheetahs, giraffe and several types of monkeys. Both experiences were thoroughly enjoyable, although an ostrich made a mess inside our car when it stuck its head through the window and tried to wrestle the animal food away from me with its beak. Ostrich necks aren’t very strong but what they lack in torque, they make up for in speed. Those beaks strike fast! You’ve been warned!

The drive-in theatre experience made a convert out of me. Car seats are far more comfortable than theatre seats. I doubt I’ll ever see a cinema with reclining, heated, ventilated seats with adjustable lumbar. The audio also exceeded my expectations. The theatre tells you what radio frequency to tune in to and you get audio through your car stereo, 13 speakers for two people in our case, which sounded quite nice. If you get a chance to see a movie at a drive-in theatre, jump at it. We saw “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and ducked out before “Captain America” started because it was getting late and also because it hadn’t received good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

We drove down from DC and spent a week between these three scenic cities. I have to say each of these three cities was pretty cool in its own right. Savannah was the most impressive with all its history and character. Charleston had much of the same but was larger and more modern. Hilton Head wound up offering some fun fishing (we caught 6 sharks), reasonably-priced golf on great courses, and good shopping.

We toured a number of historic houses, took long walks on the beach on Hilton Head, visited America’s oldest standing plantation house, toured the Navy aircraft carrier in Charleston and thoroughly enjoyed the delicious Southern cuisine throughout the trip.

Given that we drove down from Washington (~7 hour trip each way), it wound up being a very reasonably-priced vacation.

We went to the big island of Hawaii for a little over a week in December, 2008. The weather was fantastic. I got to snorkel up close with a large Manta Ray, touch a green sea turtle, relax on some unbelievably beautiful and deep beaches (Hapuna Beach and Mauna Kea), charter a boat to hit all the top snorkeling spots around the Island, play some golf, go to a luau and check out some volcanoes. All in all, a nice trip. I got in some nice photography too.

Now for the bad – Hawaii is f**king expensive! Sure, it’s beautiful and everything but seriously, its a long-ass and expensive flight followed by being stuck on islands where everything is super-expensive.

If you ask me, hit up Cancun instead (as we did in Nov, 2009). The service is better, its half the price, and half the flight.