Gustafsson.nl

Go west!

Martin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:36:08 +0000

Ingrids sister Marjon is visiting for about a week, and arrived early this morning. The forecast shows rain, rain and more rain as long as it goes, but today - between the showers - we managed to go west. As much as is possible without becoming wet. Europes most western point, Cabo da Roca, is about 10 km from where we live. It’s a really nice place but today it was very windy and cold. We managed to find one Geocache as well. Here’s Jisse and Marjon with the find. The ‘west point monument’ is behind them.

Our house

admin — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:11:50 +0000

Yeah!! We have a house. Now all we have to do is waiting for the container to arrive!

google maps

Portugal

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:27:01 +0000

It’s no longer Live from Dubai, but Live from Portugal.

Before Christmas Jisse, Joppa and I went to Frankfurt (Offenbach am Main) to spend Christmas with my sister. There was still some snow when we arrived so the girls were excited. After one day it started to rain, and when Martin arrived early the 25th all snow was gone, except Jisses snowman, or what was left of it. We did a lot of caching in Offenbach and a lot of walking (my sister drives a Mini, no room for 4 adults and 2 children.)

The 30th of december we flew to Lisbon. We had nice weather in the beginning, but the last 10 days it has been raining. Too bad. But, as all people say, it will get better and spring will be lovely here.

Jisse started at IPS, a British school. The first day she was very nervous, but when I picked her up at the end of the day she was smiling. She really liked it.

Joppa started a few days later at the Swedish School. She too likes it very much.

After the first week at school we decided to do some caching. Martin was trying to locate an internetcafe as I and the girls went to the beach. After 2 minutes on the beach Joppa was suprised by a wave and wet untill her knees. Joppa and I had to go back home and Jisse and Martin tried to find the cache. So much for a nice day out:) The cache wasn’t found that day but eventually they found it a couple of days later. Still a lot of caches to be found here.

Birdie nam nam

admin — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:54:54 +0000

Geocaching is great! It encourages you to get out in the weekend, and takes you to a lot of places where you normally never would set your foot. Today it took us to one of the best bird-watching place in Dubai (probably the only bird-watching place in Dubai but what the heck). It’s the Ras Al Khor wildlife sanctuary. We’ve been driving past many times before and seen all the flamingos that are wading around in the shallow water. It seems Dubai municipality is feeding the flamingos by placing shrimp-pellets there every day. Hmm, typical Dubai - almost everything is artificial. (BTW, just read in the paper that Abu Dhabi are planning artificial lakes in the desert, complete with pumps and cleaning mechanisms, to ‘promote’ the desert wildlife like arabian Oryx etc).

Anyway, we found the cache there, cleverly hidden along the footpath to the shelter. And shrimp-pellets or not: hundreds of pink flamingos are always an impressing and beautiful sight:

Joppa on skies

Martin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:00:25 +0000

About at the same time we heard from Sweden about the first big snow-fall, Joppa was skiing in Dubai. It was her first time ever on real slalom skies, and it was clearly wobbly. But at the end of the ‘discovery-lesson’ she was able to break and reduce speed. Turning will be next time - the main thing is that she liked it. Here’s a photo of Jop just before the skiing.

Short desert trip

admin — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 17:03:59 +0000

Joppa was supposed to go skiing for the first time this weekend, but she got a fever and had to stay home. So instead Jisse and myself went for a trip outside Dubai to find some geocaches. We found two of them, both out in the desert so it was very hot. Jisse had a sweater on in the car and forgot to take it out before taking a hike in the sun, which of course didn’t make things better.

After that we tried to go to Jebel Yibir, which is the highest mountain in UAE (1527 m). Unfortunately we ran out of time and had to turn back just as we reached the foot of the mountain. Got sime nice photos anyway…

Portugal!!!

Martin — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:38:01 +0000

Finally, it’s settled - we are going to Portugal!!! Martin’s got a new job in Lisbon. The move will take place after the schools are ending, so around mid/end December. So now a busy period starts: finding house/school, deciding dates for the move and arrange temporary housing, start throwing stuff away that we don’t want to keep. Plus see the last few things in UAE that we haven’t seen yet, and arranging farewell parties for us and the kids.

Caching again

Martin — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 20:24:35 +0000

Weekend again, and geocaching again. On the way home from a very good lunch at some friends place, we stopped by Dragon Mart and made an attempt to find the cache stored there. I looked and looked, but didn’t find anything. Then came Jisse and she spotted the very small (nano-size) cache directly. Good work.

Dubai metro has opened

Martin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:44:13 +0000

At 9 seconds and 9 minutes past 9 pm on 9/9 2009, the Dubai metro made it’s first official run. And on the next day the regular service started. We made the first trip today, from Mall of the Emirates to Union station on the Deira-side of the creek. It started so-so - we went up the stairs to the pedastrian bridge between MoE and the metrostation, only to come to a locked door. On the other side were people walking, and a guard standing, who refused to let us in. So: down the stairs, across the street between all the cars, into the mall, up one stair, walk around 400 m in the mall to come to the bridge,… After 10 minutes we passed the door again, this time on the right side, and gave the guard the ‘evil eye’. After this some confusion at the ticket office, seems not all types of tickets were available, and the crew couldn’t really explain how long time the tickets were valid, but we bought a 2-zone, 2-trip ticket for 11 Dhs each, and that took us to the city centre, and back about an hour later.

The ride itself was great. Very smooth, and no feeling of being in a roller coaster (the track goes up and down as it passes either under or above crossing roads so a lot of people had some doubts when seeing it). I asked Jisse and Joppa to check out who was driving the train, and they came back very surprised and said ‘there is noone there’. True, the trains are driverless.

Only about 1 out of 4 stations were open, but they were very nice. Dubai-style in a good sense. Bright, quite shiny, nice materials. The metro will definitely add some much needed atmosphere to Dubai, make it more of a big city - and it will for sure open up new areas for visits, areas which were tricky to reach earlier due to traffic and lack of car park spaces.

Here are a few pictures from our first ride:

We’ve started geocaching

Martin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 15:18:46 +0000

Ingrid came with the idea that we should start geocaching. We explained it to the kids as ‘treasure hunting’ and they were very excited. So yesterday we started our geocaching career with a quite easy one in the neighbourhood: In the shadow of the Burj 2, and then followed up with another one just across Sheik Zayed Road, in Internet City. Jisse found both of them. These caches were of the micro-type, meaning there was only a pencil and a small logbook in the cache, and the kids now demands that the next one will be one ‘with toys’. Let’s see - the bigger ones are often out of the city and it’s still a bit hot to go around in the desert looking for hidden treasures.

Don’t know what geo-caching is? Geocaching is a treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online.. More info on www.geocaching.com.

And this link shows you all caches currently active in UAE - quite a lot to find