November 16, 2008

Friday Night Dubai Style Part II

For dinner Tim was dying to go back to his favorite childhood restaurant, Cactus Cantina. Being a Muslim country, alcohol is forbidden in the United Arab Emirates. The only places you can drink are in bars or restaurants inside hotels. Cactus Cantina opened in 1992, and not one thing has changed since then. We laughed so hard, coming from the posh Bahri Bar to Cactus Cantina which was a kid-friendly, completely cheesy, Mexican joint!


After a few pitchers of margaritas and a ‘2 for 1’ dinner special, we quickly hurried off to our next destination. We went to a Japanese restaurant/shisha bar in Jumeirah. Everyone in Dubai is always smoking shisha, we’ve seen shisha cafe’s everywhere, you can smell it on the street! There are tons of different flavors, we tried strawberry and mint. This is a favorite pastime of the locals, and of course we had to ‘experience the culture’! At this point I had had a few marg’s, so I can’t quite recall the name of this little swanky place we went. The odd part was that it was absolutely packed, we barely got a table, and there was not one sip of alcohol on the menu. No where else in the world, would you have a restaurant/cafe/shisha smoking place fully crowded on a Friday night without serving alcohol. But this is the middle east! People roll up in their ferraris, (we saw 5 throughout the night) smoke a little shisha, drink some strawberry juice, and go home!
Jumeirah Mosque at night…lovely!

We had an absolute blast! Chris and El are such fun company, and great hosts. Next time we’re going to try grape or lemon! There are a few other bars we are dying to see so I’ll keep you updated with our next social outing!
SHARE THE POST
FacebookTwitterPinterest

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *