Dubai: A hazy day at the beach – Ritz-Carlton Beach Club

My old friend Mike had a layover in Dubai, so we arranged to meet for lunch at Ritz-Carlton. It’s been a long time since Poul and I were at the beach, so before meeting Mike, we decided to spend a couple of hours at Ritz-Carlton’s beach club.

It was a little hazy in the morning, but we figured it would clear up later. It didn’t. Instead it got worse to a point where we couldn’t even see the water. It also got colder, so I was hiding under a big beach towel with a cup of hot coffee, until it was time to go for lunch.

Palm Grill is my favorite restaurant at Ritz-Carlton. The tables are right on the beach, and the menu is casual and just what I want to eat on a day by the beach. Unfortunately, the were only serving Christmas buffet that day, so we went to La Baie instead, which is a pool side restaurant at the hotel. The food at La Baie is also nice, and I was pleased with my vegetarian burger.

Later on, we walked over to Paul at JBR for a cup of coffee and an almond croissant. I’m still yet to find a place that makes almond croissants as good as Paul does. There’s so much of that super delicious almond filling inside, and the croissants taste like they’ve just been pulled out of the oven.

It was really nice to see Mike again and get some gossip from back home. At flight school, I was in the same class as Mike, while Poul was a year ahead of us, so we have a lot of common friends from back then. Most of them work for Norwegian or SAS today, so we told Mike that he should convince some of them to come to Dubai instead and keep us company.

Mike was supposed to fly back home early in the morning on the 24^th, but because of the haze, they couldn’t get out of Dubai, and he ended up celebrating Christmas Eve on board the airplane instead. As for me, I ended up celebrating Christmas Eve in Jakarta airport, but more on that in another post.

Read about another day with bad weather and flooding in Dubai