Tuesday 4th

Time for the long journey home today, our twelve and half hour flight to Dubai leaving at 10.40am, and we arranged some transport to JFK airport with a car service recommended by the owner of our apartment! We got up at 6.30am and did a last minute clean through, packed the last of the stuff into our cases and were waiting downstairs at 7.30am as instructed, having been advised that the traffic would be pretty horrendous at that time and it would take a while to get to the airport!
George, or more precisely George Snr, pulled up in a Ford Crown Limited which is the typical Yank Tank! We managed to fit our four big cases into the huge trunk and got chauffered along fine style through the chaos that is New York traffic, getting us to JFK in plenty of time and dropping us at Terminal 4 which Emirates use and is stuck out at one end of JFK! We did our checkin and put the cases through the scanner and decided to get through the lines of the security scans and get some breakfast etc. on the departure side. It turned out to be a por decision as there were only four shops and no choice of anything - as I said the terminal is stuck out in the back of beyond and there were very minimal facilities! We got a drink and a snack???  and prepared for a ninety minute wait till boarding! 
Katie had succumbed to the dreaded sinus and nose problems that the constant air conditioning causes and was feeling pretty rotten and Jase had got very little with her constant caughing so we weren't a particularly happy bunch - all made worse by the thought of a long, long flight!!!
The time passed quickly enough, our boarding was duly called and we settled into a pretty new Boeing 777 - 300ER which had an amazing amount of leg room and the best entertainment system ever offered!!! The 1200 channels and over 200 movies in the Emirates ICE entertainment system along with a 10" touch screen and live video cameras on the nose and bottom of the plane, is a quantum leap ahead of the outdated crap that Qantas offer and if it wasn't for all the Frequent Flyer points we have racked up I would be flying either Singapore or Emirates every time I got the chance to!!!
Our meals were great and the service, although not quite to the Singapore Air standard, was superb and the twelve hours, split between watching a couple of great movies, doing my blog and having a nap, passed pretty quickly.
The Dubai Airport has to be seen to be believed! Huge halls made of glass, chrome and mirrors, with marble floors and water features everywhere! It was a sign of things to come, as we discovered that evrything in Dubai is overkill! Emirates occupies the whole of Terminal Three and whether the other terminals are as grandiose I'm not sure but we faced countless Passport Control and Security Check booths and then a baggage claim hall that was as big as the whole Qantas Domestic Terminal in Perth! Once we had collected our cases we went to a taxi rank that had a constant stream (and I mean constant!) of immaculate beige, mostly Toyota Camry taxis, queueing up for service. Because of our four cases we were shown to a larger Toyota wagon called a "ladies or family" taxi driven by a little Sri Lankan woman who heaved the cases into the back, loaded us in and set off for our hotel!!!
Basically we were all gobsmacked by our first sights of Dubai and its amazing development and infrastructure! The major roads are mostly four lanes each way, some six and the main road Sheik Zayed Road was eight lanes each way in places!!!!! The landscaping and gardens were immaculate with millions of marigolds and bouganvillias providing colour, bowling green style lawns in between, and no sign of any rubbish anywhere! Outside some of the major malls (or shopping centres) the footpaths were of polished marble about ten metres wide, constantle swept by workers!
The number and styles of skyscrapers that lined the highway blew us away especially several of the newer ones and especially the Burg Al Arab which until a year or so ago was the tallest building in the world. The number of new buildings being constructed was unbelievable, oil money certainly wins out here!
The traffic was a mad house but it didn't take our taxi long to drive the twenty or so kilometres to our Holiday Inn al Barsha, with the driver making some very pertinent comments about the state of Australian cricket when the scores came on the radio!!!
We chose our hotel on the basis that is was out of the city proper and closer to the beach area of Jumeirah, close to the huge Mall of the Emirates and was well within our budget and we were very pleasantly surprised when we entered the smallish building to find an impressive foyer and more staff than you think of! As it was only 9.30am we did not expect to be able to have our rooms, hoping to just store them and start exploring, but after we explained the length of time we had been travelling we were given the keys to ultra clean and modern rooms without any fuss whatsoever! Score a big plus for the Holiday Inn al Barsha!
A quick shower and a freshen up followed and then we walked a couple hundred metres to the Mall of the Emirates to try and get a tour on the hop on - hop off double deck bus. If you think the biggest shopping centre you have ever seen and then double it, you have the Mall of the Emirates!!! What a place!!! Complete with Ski Dubai which is a huge indoor ski run with real snow, the Mall has a myriad of shops and two five star hotels, which had numerous Rolls, Bentley's and other exotics awaiting valet service! It was crowded with tourists of all nationalities and when we got our tour tickets and caught the next bus, it was nearly full too. 
The tour took us back towards the city where we swapped buses and did a city circuit, taking us passed a lot of attractions and also The Creek which divides the old and new part of the city and provides harbour for the hundreds of dhows that trade up and down the coast. 
Luckily for us the weather was perfect and although we were pretty weary it was a fascinating tour, seeing all the souks and markets as well as the older and untidier parts of this place. We swapped buses again and headed down the coast towards Jumeirah again stopping by the Burg Al Arab, which the seven star hotel on the beach with the tennis court and helipad on the roof!!! Apparently if you stay there in one of the suites a chopper collects you from the airport and whisks you to your accommodation.
From there it was out onto the Palm Jumeirah, the man made islands in the shape of a palm tree, and the utter extravagance of all the hotels (over twenty of them) and private accommodation on them. You can buy your own island at anywhere between five and fifteen million dollars and many have been purchased by the worlds rich and famous! The ultimate in extravagance and expense is at the top of the palm in the form of the Atlantis Resort which has over 2,500 rooms and features pools, beaches and water features too numerous for me to remember - google it and be just as amazed as we were!!!!
Back to our stop and then back to the hotel for a nap as we were all stuffed after being on the go for just on twenty four hours was next and we all got about three hours sleep before having a drink and a beaut thai dinner at one of the four restaurants in the hotel to end our holiday! We were in bed and sound asleep by 9.30pm!