It's Tuesday, This Must Be Dubai*

Under the circumstances we spent a very pleasant Chanukah, with Gila and Tzvi joining us for the weekend, candle lighting with family in the UK over Zoom and some socially distanced candle lighting and doughnuts with friends in Netanya. 

With business virtually stopping in the UK over Christmas and new year Malcolm had booked a fortnight off work and we had planned several days out with friends as well as planning our annual watching of seasonal movies. A Muppet Christmas Carol, Goodbye Mr. Chips and It’s a Wonderful Life top of Malcolm’s viewing list. Our oldest son Alexander was on holiday in Dubai with his friend Saul and our youngest son Samuel. As London went into tier 3 with the new tier 4 on the horizon he messaged us. If they could extend their trip would we come out and join them. Travelling during a pandemic is not straight forward with rules in all countries changing at a moments notice so we had to consider the various scenarios that might arise. The worse that could happen would be that Dubai would become a red country and we would have to quarantine at home for ten days when we got back. So on Thursday 17th we booked to go to Dubai from Sunday 21st to Thursday 24th December.

Jump back to September and we were all overjoyed when it was announced that The United Arab Emirates were to normalise relations with Israel. Peace with our neighbours is the ultimate dream for most Israelis and Jews around the world. The last time this happened was in 1994 with Jordan and 1979 with Egypt. These have meant that there have been no wars between Israel and these countries, which is huge, but Israelis are not openly welcomed and it is sometimes referred to as a cold peace. Israeli planes are not allowed to fly over most Arab airspace so, for example, Australians visiting Israel or returning from Israel to Australia to visit family, could only break the flight in Europe adding an extra five hours on to an already very long journey.

This new normalisation treaty welcomed Israelis immediately to the UAE opening, amongst other places, Dubai as a holiday destination. Israelis love to travel, partly I think because Israel is such a small country and partly to escape the constant threat of war, and they have obviously not been able to travel now for months. With schools breaking up for the Chanukah holidays and Israel and UAE creating a green travel corridor, it was reported that 56,000 Israelis had flown to Dubai. Add to that all the UK Jews who leapt at the opportunity for some winter sun - well to be honest it was just mind blowing. Truly this was not something that I thought I'd ever see. Alexander sent us a picture from the bottom of the Burj Khalifa, above right. If you look closely you can see a Chanukiah in the background and the people sitting are wearing kippot (skull caps). UNBELIEVABLE!

So whilst the only reason we were going was to meet up with the boys we were so excited to be flying El Al (Israels national airline) to Dubai FROM ISRAEL!

I will try not to overdo the capitals, exclamation marks and pictures of departure and arrival boards but you can probably tell that we were just buzzing (still am) with the whole experience.

The airport, whilst by no means full, was a lot busier than when we traveled to the UK in October and we actually had to queue to check in! On board I did eventually stop taking pictures of the flight map but was very excited to fly over Tel Aviv in a completely new direction, to see the Dead Sea as we flew over the Jordanian Border and then to fly over the desert on our way over Saudi Arabia. Most exciting moment? Waiting to let a flydubai plane land before we could move onto the runway.

Dubai Airport was enormous, with endless walking. After disembarking we all had to have a covid test and then went to collect our baggage. Connecting to the wifi whilst waiting we were shocked to read about the new mutation of coronavirus in the UK. Just when one thought things couldn't get any worse, it had.

As we booked so soon before coming we didn't have time to do a lot of research into where to stay, but did come across a hotel in the business district which was providing kosher catering from 20th December to 4th January, Another wow. Although, apparently, it's possible to get kosher food delivered to most hotels in Dubai we decided to go for the fully kosher option. On Monday morning as we enjoyed our breakfast and waited for the boys to change hotels, I couldn't resist sneaking a picture of two gentlemen having a business breakfast - one wearing a kippah and one a ghutrah and kandura.

When the boys finally arrived we set off for a lovely afternoon at 'The largest water park in the world'!

Collecting our phones from the lockers when we left we were horrified to see messages from friends warning us that Israel were changing the travel rules again, saying that all travelers returning to Israel after 2pm on Wednesday would have to go into a quarantine hotel and that all travelers from the UK were being quarantined in hotels with immediate effect. What did I say earlier about things couldn't get worse?! We had heard very grim tales about the quarantine hotels, where you have to stay in your room the whole time, so we got straight on the internet to try and change our flights. Surprise, surprise there were no seats left. I'm never going to get Malcolm to part with his phone for a whole afternoon ever again! So we talked ourselves into accepting that we would have to quarantine in a hotel and determined that we would not let it spoil the rest of our time with the boys.

We woke up on Tuesday morning to the news that El Al were putting on extra flights. I won't bore you with the details of the next painful couple of hours when the system crashed every time we tried to confirm our change of booking, but we were finally confirmed as having seats on the 9.30pm flight back to Tel Aviv that evening.

We set off to make the most of our last day. A visit to a new city always demands a trip on the metro/train so we set off by metro to the Dubai Mall.

Dubai is extraordinary. The architecture of the skyscrapers is amazing and everything is over sized, from the mall, the largest mall in the world by total land area, and the 26th-largest shopping mall in the world by gross leasable area, to the roads, from 6 to 12 lanes, weaving their way through the skyscrapers. The mall has, amongst other things, an aquarium in the middle of it. We resisted the urge to shop as everything was expensive compared to the UK, never mind Israel. Not petrol however. We couldn't resist looking at the prices as we passed a petrol station. At 37p a litre it is cheaper than water.

We then went to the older part of the city enjoying taking a water taxi across the river to the souk. Many of the spices on sale were noticeably different from those on sale in the souk of Jerusalem, but not the pressure from the vendors to come and peruse their wares. Eyes front, we are all far too British to cope with it.

All too soon it was time to pack up and return to the airport. All three Israeli airlines had put on extra flights so there were more Israelis at the airport than any other nationality. It was a bit of a balagan* at the check in desk and the plane took off late but with the cut off time for arriving in Israel 2pm the next day we were relieved to be in the air by 10.30pm for a four hour flight. Highlight of the return trip was taking a photo, as requested by my mother, of an El Al plane on the tarmac in Dubai. From landing to getting in the taxi took only 45 minutes including getting our luggage and having our third covid test in six days, so roughly 48 hours after we set off we were home!

So in 6 months we’ve come full circle, and are now back in quarantine! As luck would have it one of the things Samuel had brought out from the UK for me was a new 2,000 piece jigsaw! In nine days we can take another test and will be out of quarantine, if its negative - but as the whole country is due to go back into national lockdown (equivalent of tier 4 in the UK) on Sunday it doesn't make much difference!

We appreciate how lucky we are that the weather is still nice here so I was back in the pool first thing. For Malcolm's birthday a couple of years ago Samuel bought him a map, to scratch off the countries he has visited. It was a very special moment to scratch off an Arab country.

After having to come back early from our trip to the UK in October we both say we won’t leave Israel again until the pandemic is over and everyone is vaccinated....but I have a feeling we said that when we came back from England early! We have a weakness for spur of the moment acts of madness so I wouldn’t put money on it. And was it worth it?

Every precious minute with the boys? - 100%

* ref the 1969 film It's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium

*Balagan is a word with a history, having come to Yiddish via the Slavic languages, where it was borrowed from the Persians. In common Yiddish (and, by extension, English and Hebrew) parlance, balagan is a state of chaos, disarray and confusion.