We are heading home again for the summer after another lovely year spent in the ‘Gulf’. This post is a retrospective look at the year. Perhaps I should do more than one for an entire year, but hey, here we are!

Dubai designates specific beaches for different activities. If you want to go surfing (when there actually is a surf), you need to go to one beach. If you want to wind-surf, then you go to another beach.

Our favourite beach is Sufouh Beach, which is about a 10 minute drive from our villa. This beach is for families and no activities are permitted that may cause harm to others (like a surf board in the head). They also ban ‘bachelors’ – a euphemism for the armies of labourers that comprise a significant portion of Dubai’s population – they may or may not be bachelors, but certainly their wives are not resident in Dubai.

We tend to go in the morning and have breakfast on the beach. However, we will sometimes switch it up and head down for the sunset.

Iconic architecture abounds. The Burj al Arab sits just a couple KMs from the beach and if the air was clearer, you would be able to see the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building off in the distance.

When not at the beach, we love to sit in our garden, often after returning from the beach, have a glass of something light and read in front of the fire. We have been known to play a game or two of backgammon as well.

Not nearly often enough, we invite some of our awesome friends over for a shisha and a cold one.

With all of these tourist attractions, which I assure you attract millions of tourists every year, we are fortunate to be able to act like tourists ourselves and go out with friends to enjoy some of the finer treats Dubai has to offer.

All of these wonderful experiences are made so much better by sharing them with great friends.

Rhonda and John live close by on the 17th floor of one of the many apartment blocks that shape the Dubai skyline.

While my studies have put a major dent in our outdoor activities, we still manage to get out of the city and do some exploring.

My students come from some fairly remote areas in the UAE and so I sometimes go and drive around their communities just to see what they see everyday.

Some students drive more than an hour each way to come in from their desert homes.

Once I get home from work everyday, I often spend time in the garden tending to our vegetable patch. This past year we ate salads and vegetables out of this garden almost everyday from October to May, when the heat finally fried the last of the baby bok choi.

I also spend a lot of time just tending to the garden – very relaxing!

We used to foster abandoned cats before we adopted Bella and Donna. So, we have a soft spot for the many kitty cats that run around the streets here. This cat refused to leave our garden and so we fed her for a few weeks and then eventually found her a home.

Speaking of cats, Bella and Donna continue to prosper. Donna will be 12 in September while Bella recently turned 9. Both have been shaved in preparation for their long summer home alone. It will be just them, the maid and the gardener for 6 weeks until Annette returns.