It'll be nice when it's finished..

Sorry for the delay in publishing the blog this week, we had the pleasure of visiting our friends in Sharjah which is an Emirate between us and Dubai.  However it's a lot more like Dubai than Ras al Khaimah!

The first thing you hear when you say you're moving to Ras al-Khaimah is 'where?', no-one has heard of the place, so you end up saying 'it's near to Dubai' and most people have heard of that.  The slogan for the RAK (Ras al-Khaimah) tourist agency is 'The rising Emirate', which is absolutely true.  We've been told by people that have lived here a while that there has been a huge amount of development here over the last five years, some of it aimed at people willing to commute to Dubai or Sharjah and other elements targeted at developing the tourist industry.  Suffice to say that there is a long way to go here before it gets as cosmopolitan as Dubai but you can only admire the effort being put in to finding a place for RAK in the world of the Emirates.

Sharjah and Dubai are incredible to the first time visitor.  If you go as a tourist and get transfers in to the hotel then tours around the city, you'll see the landmarks but miss the sense of the places. There are so many skyscrapers that you wonder where all the people work who populate them?  So many shopping malls that you can't envisage there are enough customers to keep the shops in business, and most of it is new.  Our friend who was acting as a tour guide commented on how when he was at school, a mere twenty years ago, there was only one tall building of note and that they used to have school trips there to marvel at it's presence. Now it is dwarfed by the multitude of buildings surround and rise above it.  Any city that has a seven lane motorway running through the middle has ambitions clearly built around the car as a main form of transport, but Dubai also has a bus service and light railway. RAK has neither which is why it feels like a work in progress rather than a mature city.

Our shipment has arrived, roughly two months after seeing it put in the back of a van in East Preston, it came out of a van (not the same one..) here in RAK.  The boxes had obviously had an interesting journey and some were a little battered and bruised, but nothing was broken and nothing missing.  We had packed a couple of candles which had all but melted but that was it!  This means our flat is feeling more like home now, and tomorrow we get our pictures put up and the TV connected, which means we are just about there for phase one of our arrival.

Next week is Eid so there is a four day holiday at the request of the government and no work or school for Domi and Amélie.  We hope to get out and about to explore RAK as well as continue with the things on our to do list including continuing with our project to buy a car, the terms of which change daily!