A weekend at Radisson Blu Fujairah

Just got back from a weekend trip with Poul to Dibba in Fujairah (another Emirate). The hotel’s wi-fi worked just fine, but except for a few Instagram updates, I’ve been voluntarily off-line for most of our stay. Sometimes you just need a break, and I think it’s healthy to log yourself off cyber world once in a while.

This time of the year, it’s possible to find some really good hotel deals, as the tourists haven’t yet arrived. September is too hot for the beach in Dubai, but it’s usually quite a bit cooler in Fujairah than in Dubai, because of the mountains between the two emirates. Poul and I therefore didn’t hesitate to book, when we spotted a good online offer.

When it comes to hotels, I’m a big fan of predictability. If I’m only going away for a short break, I want to rest assured that I will not be spending my precious vacation time complaining over dirty towels or low water pressure.

During my years the airline industry, I think I’ve stayed more than 200 nights at different Radisson hotels all over Europe, and while they rarely managed to thrill me (except for the one in Brussels, that one is fab!), they also never let me down. You can never say never, but the few times I’ve experienced issues with a room at Radisson, they’ve always been able to fix it really fast.

Poul and I arrived yesterday at noon and after a short stop in the room to leave our luggage and change to beachwear, we were off to the beach. Poul and I aren’t really good at just lying in the sun, doing nothing, but I think it’s been almost a year since Poul’s last beach visit, so he was busy rediscovering the feeling of sand between his toes, and I quickly fell asleep under the parasol.

Our package included buffet dinner at one of the hotel’s restaurants so after a quick shower we were ready to go down to eat, but it was only 18:00 and the buffet had just opened, so we decided to wait a little. Every seasoned buffet diner knows that you always wait at least one hour to go, because then you’ll avoid all the families and screaming, food-throwing child monsters, as they’ll usually show up right when the buffet opens.

The buffet was ok, but the selection of dishes was rather unusual. I had read somewhere that the restaurant ran themed buffets during the week, so Poul and I asked one of the staff members what the theme of the night was. It was Italian. Without saying too much, I would never have guessed that.

This morning, we woke up early and headed down to the buffet again for breakfast. It was a good old Radisson breakfast buffet with an omelet station and fresh cut fruits, and I was happy to see that the soft-boiled eggs were indeed soft-boiled and the orange juice tasted as if it was freshly squeezed. Now that’s the way to do buffet breakfast.

Checkout wasn’t until 12 so we had almost 3 hours in the sun, before we packed our stuff and started the drive back to Dubai. Radisson Blu Fujairah was absolutely gorgeous, and I don’t think I could have wished for anything else from a beach resort (though next time, I think we’ll skip the Italian night).

My Dubai Blog

Radisson Blu, Al Aqah, Fujairah