Happy National Day UAE

The UAE celebrated National Day on the 2nd December and this year was an extra special event as the UAE turned 40 years old. The weekend celebrations also coincided with the Islamic New Year and last week the government kindly announced Thursday was a public holiday so we have just finished a lovely 3 day long weekend.
The Emirati's are an extremely patriotic and proud culture and it was an exciting weekend to be here and join in.
We live in new Dubai, although our area is called Old Town? that is Dubai for you and I am not going to even go there. Anyhow, this meant that a lot of celebrations were centred around our home area so we didn't have to go far to join in the festivities. Over the weekend we have had a classic car show along our Boulevard and the start and finish line for the Dubai Rally was also here. The highlight was this afternoon's National Day parade through the boulevard. Piper loved the parade and it actually exceeded our expectations.
Naz also joined in the festive weekend and headed to the Dubai Rugby 7s tournament with a few others.... not sure he saw much rugby but I do know he had one massive headache this morning!

In typical Dubai fashion there were no signs and very little communication warning traffic about the parade. These cars pictured are part of 4 lanes of traffic that was stopped dead in their tracks for the next hour with nothing they could do about it. It provided great side entertainment watching the frustration during the parade!

A favourite National Day activity is decorating your car. It has been interesting spotting these cars on the roads over the last couple of weeks. A lot of money is spent, I read an article last week about an Emirati woman who had spent over $250,000 dhs (approx $50,000 AUD) on her car decorations. I managed to get this snap below of a decorated Range Rover passing the Parade. The second photo is of of a car completely covered in real dirham coins. Yes that is a real moving car with somebody inside driving it..... UAE tinting rules is a whole new blog for another day!