Dubai Metro Station

I started documenting the new metro line and station at Discovery Gardens back in November 2017. 

When this photo was taken in January, I had no idea where the station was going to be located, turns out it's right where the piece of yellow machinery is. 

I wrote a post back in June with photo's of the stations development which you can find here.

Peter has continued to take random photos for me while I'm in the UK, I suspect by the time I get back in October it will be complete, although the line isn't due to open until early 2019.

It doesn't look like much has been done over the past few months, but just take a look at the first picture and see how much they've done in 7 already.

17th June

24th June

30th July

5th August

10th August

You can see some of the other construction projects and interesting buildings I've visited around the world by clicking on the links below:

Week 158 Dubai Bluewater Islands and Dubai Eye. Man made island a 210m high Big Wheel
Week 159 Dubai Dubai Marina - Reflections
Week 160 Dubai Dubai Frame. A window between the Old and New Dubai and a 150m high glass floor.

Week 161 Dubai Dubai Marina 3 years apart.

Week 162 Dubai Dubai Water Canal Bridge Construction and reconfiguration of roads

Week 163 Dubai New Metro Line for Expo 2020
Week 164 Arizona and Nevada Hoover Dam 2002 - 2010
Week 165 Dubai Dubai Opera House What a difference a year makes
Week 166 Dubai Unfinished buildings. The Pentominium
Week 167 Coventry Mixing the old and the new. Coventry Catherdral
Week 168 Dubai New Dubai Metro Station 
Week 169 Dubai The new extension of the Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa 
Week 170 Dubai Hotel fire After the Address fire 
Week 171 Dubai Unusual designs The Opus Building
Week 172 Dubai District Cooling. Keeping the desert cool.
Week 173 Dubai Can I visit the Burj Al Arab
Week 174 Dubai The Almas Tower
Week 175 Dubai The Cayan Tower
Week 176 Toronto The CN Tower
Week 177 Nevada The Paris Hotel 
Week 178 Dubai Ibn Battuta Gate
Week 179 A Wedding
Week 180 Dubai The World's Tallest Tower
Week 181 Dubai and Wales Al Fahidi Fort and Chepstow Castle 
Week 182 Dubai New Metro Station in Al Furjan 
Week 183 Dubai Ski Dubai
Week 184 Another Wedding
Week 185 South Africa Life in a township
Week 186 Austria Ski Jump 
Week 187 Dubai Green Plant Bio Dome 

Week 30 - One Daily Positive

I was in Germany for the week visiting friends we knew when we all lived in South Africa. Child 4 was also in Germany this week with work, but a 2 hour drive north from Munich. I'll see him on Saturday morning when I fly back into Manchester as he'll be collecting me with 4a when they drive over from Belfast via Liverpool for the week.

Peter spent the weekend with friends in Istanbul and is now back working in Dubai.

I'm spending the days on my own while Dirk and Jacques are in work, the evenings are spent putting the world to rights. There's not much English spoken in this part of Germany, but I'm doing ok with ordering coffee, food and buying train tickets.

I also took a drive over the border to Innsbruck in Austria, although I'm used to driving on the right hand side of the road, I've never driven a manual left hand drive, in fact I rarely drive manuals these days so hill starts through the tiny villages in the Alps were a bit of a challenge.

203 Sunday I woke to torrential rain, it was lovely, we don't get rain like this in Dubai and I haven't seen any since I arrived in the UK the end of May. We spent the day at a medieval festival.

204 Monday I explored Wolfratshausen on foot and visited a fairyland theme park.

205 Tuesday A lie in and then off to Munich on the train. I love how the municipality puts chairs out for people to just sit and watch the world go by in the city centre.

206 Wednesday I drove to Austria and visited Innsbruck for the day. Check out My Sunday Photo tomorrow.

207 Thursday Peter announced he had some days off in August and booked himself a flight to Greece in 3 weeks time, I've of course booked a flight to join him from the UK and now looking for somewhere to stay. I visited Starnberg and the lakes today.

208 Friday Coffee, packed, finished reading my book and flew back to Manchester. I stayed in airport hotel.

209 Saturday Up early and collected by 4 and 4a on their way over from Belfast for the week. Later tonight I'm going to Newport to a friends 50th birthday.

I've been using Google Maps to travel throughout Germany by car, train and on foot. I used their maps to drive to Austria. Yesterday I typed in my destination, it tried to take me through car parks and over fences. I clicked the bus symbol, caught the 288 and was at the hotel in under 4 mins. Why didn't the damn thing work when I got back?

On the blog this week:

I didn't realise how crap my life was until I switched on the TV in the UK and saw the adverts.

Should I seize the day more? Say sod it to the G&T and extra slice of cake? It's all about balance and starting point.

Did you know in 2018, people still walks miles to get fresh drinking water? Life in a township in South Africa

New Dubai Metro Station Discovery Gardens

I posted a photo of the new Metro Line for Expo 2020 for Week 163, showing the progress of the line between October 2017 and 11th February 2018. Well I travelled to the UK for 4 weeks and I returned home to discover the new station is well underway and thankfully not that far from where I live.

I'll photograph it's progress weekly between now and May 31st when I next leave Dubai to see how far it's come along.

Week 158 Bluewater Islands and Dubai Eye. Man made island a 210m high Big Wheel
Week 159 Dubai Marina - Reflections
Week 160 Dubai Frame. A window between the Old and New Dubai and a 150m high glass floor.

Week 161 Dubai Marina 3 years apart.

Week 162 Dubai Water Canal Bridge Construction and reconfiguration of roads

Week 163 New Metro Line for Expo 2020
Week 164 Hoover Dam 2002 - 2010
Week 165 Dubai Opera House What a difference a year makes
Week 166 Unfinished buildings. The Pentominium
Week 167 Mixing the old and the new. Coventry Catherdral

8 important questions to ask when booking car hire

We've often used a family members car when we've visited the UK, but as we usually fly into Heathrow or more often Birmingham, it's one heck of a trip getting to South Wales or Bath to collect the vehicle and with family and friends living all over the UK, it's been easier on our last few trips to book car hire.

We've used one of the larger search engines to find the best deals, but there have been a few hiccups and often the place where we've had to collect the car from has involved a train, bus trip or walk to reach it. Service has often been slow and poor and not fun when you've just got off a long haul flight, lugging a 30kg suitcase and hand luggage.

On both the last two occasions, when we returned the vehicles there was some minor damage to the paint work, scuff marks and stone chips.

We took out Collision Waiver Damage, CWD, which almost doubled the initial costs advertised on the website with the booking company.

CWD means that any accident, theft or damage to the vehicle is covered fully, but it also means you lose your deposit to the actual car hire company and then you have to provide receipts which you forward to the booking company for a full refund.

Having your car hire and insurance with different companies worked well for us the first time and the £400 deposit was returned to our credit card before the payment was due.

However on the last trip, the deposit was £1200 and was retained by the car hire company, for 2 stone chips and a scuff mark that could've easily T cut out had I had the car cleaned before returning it. Receipts were forwarded as before, but this time I waited 3 months before the deposit was refunded, meaning I had to pay the credit card bill off in full. I only got my deposit returned after I threatened the booking company with the ombudsman. The delay was due to the car hire company not providing evidence of the cost of repairs, meaning I had to wait for them to refund the difference between the repairs and the deposit then the booking company refunding the cost of the repairs.

As a result and the difficulties in sorting things like this out from another country, I've decided to investigate booking direct, with everything in one place. The car hire and the insurance together is almost double the price of booking with one of the low cost companies, but the excess is very high and to reduce it to £0 the cost of hire, the cost almost doubles again.

It's not always transparent at the time of booking the T&C's of car hire and these are important questions to answer before renting a car.

1. Do you return the car empty or full?
2. Is the mileage limited?
3. What is the cost for an additional driver?
4. Is there an additional charge for drop off at another location?
5. Is CWD included? Is it with the car hire company or an independent?
6. Breakdown?
7. What is the excess? How do you recover your costs from CWD?
8. Windscreen and wheel rim protection?

I also think there should be some wear and tear allowance to vehicles, yes I'm responsible for scuffs to body work and damage to the paint, but stone chips are a bit difficult to avoid.

So I've gone back to using search engines and found a different one to book through this time. However I still have to collect the car from the place where I had the problems on my last visit. I've decided I'd rather keep the costs down, as I need car hire for 4 weeks and again in June for approximately 12 weeks.

Who do you use for car hire? Have you experienced similar problems?

My Top 6 Tips for starting a conversation when travelling

Solo travelling is very lonely, the very fact I've used the word solo in the the opening line indicates one is alone, although many people prefer to travel in silence, I'm not one of them. I like to meet people and find out more about where I am visiting and get some insider tips that may not be on offer in the guide books.

When I travel I often have somewhere to stay with people I know. I spend many hours at airports, on planes, trains, buses and on foot. I also stay in B&B's and hotels on my own as I travel through from place to place.

There are plenty of people who like to while (or wile) away the hours with a chat, but how do you know they want to talk?

It may sound relatively simple to start a conversation with someone, a stranger, but it can also be hard work, they may want to sleep, they may not be a sociable person themselves, they may not even speak the same language, but I've whiled away many an hour, in transit, chatting to people I'll never see again and for me it does make a journey a lot more pleasurable and time passes quicker.

People can be suspicious of strangers talking to them, so if you don't succeed the first time, keep trying or you'll end up sitting in silence watching back to back movies or completing puzzles. You'll get a good feeling if someone is interested in chatting or whether they just want to sit/sleep in silence by:

• Making eye contact and smiling, it lets people know you are friendly and approachable.
• Offering to help someone who are struggling with a bag, bay, small child, TV screen on the plane.
• Commenting on something you have in common, such as the waiting, destination, where you're from.
• Commenting on a general topic of current interest, either in the country your flying from or to.
• Asking open questions.
• Responding to what the person says.

Do you have have any other tips on starting a conversation or are one of those people that prefers to sit in silence? 

How else do you pass the time on long journeys?

Week 88 My Sunday Photo. Driverless trains in Dubai

In 2012, Guinness World Records declared Dubai Metro the world's longest fully automated metro network with a route length of 75 kilometres or 47 miles.

A positive review of Easy Jet - Luton to Munich.

This is the first time I've flown with a low cost airline and to be honest I was a bit concerned there would be problems. I never see or hear anything positive about low cost airlines and I hear all the time about the additional charges that people complain are a rip off, like booking seats together and paying for boarding passes and in general the mass melee to get on the plane before departure.

I however was pleasantly surprised when I arrived at Luton airport to board my flight to Munich in July.

I was however, also very confused when I arrived at Luton while I waited for check in to open, to realise that I could just show my boarding pass and passport at departures and go straight through as I was travelling with hand luggage only.

There was no pushing and shoving as we lined up to board the plane, my only complaint would be that there was no where to sit while we waited to board, but other than that it was fine.

A few people had paid for priority boarding, I've no idea how much that cost them, but at the end of the day, the plane wasn't going anywhere until we were all on it, so in my opinion, it was a bit of a waste of money.

My luggage weighed 15kg, it fitted in the over head compartment and I was able to lift it easily. The luggage allowance for the cabin was very generous, most of the weight was magazines and gifts.

I was allocated a seat and after years of long haul flying I was surprised at just how much leg room there was and how clean the plane was also.

I purchased a G&T at £5.50 which was £2.50 cheaper than the price I'd paid in a St Alban's pub the night before.

The flight both ways was uneventful and I spent it reading a book and looking out the window.

Peter informed me on my return I had actually flown with Easy Jet in the past to Berlin on two occasions in 2006, that had obviously been excellent flights also or I'd have remembered it.

I'm not sure if people just complain for the sake of complaining these days. My expectations of Easy Jet were very low, considering I'd paid half of what the flight with other airlines would've cost me.

I'll certainly fly with them again when I'm next in Europe, it's just a shame they don't offer flights from Dubai, as at their prices I'd be more than prepared to put up with some of the horror stories I've read about online, in exchange for lower prices.

(Tongue in cheek) Disclaimer:
I was not paid in anyway to write this article, however if Easy Jet would like me on board as an ambassador I'd be more than happy to oblige.

My Sunday Photo Week 5 Exploring the neighbourhood

I could post a picture of our new home or the creative book case I made from wine crates, but instead I've chosen this photo of what Bob and I are doing right now. We're on the Al Wasl road at the bus stop waiting for hubby, then off to get passport photos done so he can apply for his driving licence and we can buy a car.

Did you know Wasl is the old name for Dubai?