We let the boys sleep in while Charlie and I went to the Jumeirah Mosque for a tour and information session on religion and local culture hosted by the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding.  While the boys had learned about the Islamic religion in their 9th grade history class, we did not know that much and found it fascinating and enlightening.  Since we both had shorts on (the temperature was over 100 degrees with high humidity even at 10am), we had to dress appropriately to enter the mosque.

Later that day we went on a desert safari in the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve.  After a 45 minute drive, we stopped in the parking lot to deflate the tires on our Toyota SUV so we could drive more easily though the dunes.  We set off with a caravan of other SUVs from Arabian Adventures and drove through the dunes.  It felt as though we were surfing through them.  Our driver was excellent.

 

Along the way we saw some of the wildlife …

And stopped for some photos and to watch the sun go down.  It was very windy which was hard for any of us with contact lenses.

We then arrived at a bedouin camp where the boys tried snowboarding down the dunes (hard to buckle in with flip flops), we all road camels and then dressed up in traditional bedouin attire.  Another fun adventure.

Our last stop for the evening was to watch the fountain show in front of the Berg Al Khalifa  (at the moment the tallest building in the world).