Where shall we eat?

Cafés, restaurants, foodcourts - the choices are endless. Well, usually anyway. Yesterday, I was hoping to take Joy out for a special Birthday lunch and we ended up having a bit of an adventure looking for somewhere [anywhere!] that was open for business.

Ramadan is here and I knew that some cafés would be closed but for some reason did not expect everything to be shut, especially not at the Mall of the Emirates. It's our first Ramadan here in the Middle East, and we really didn't know what to expect. Apparently, some cafés and restaurants need to get approval from the Dubai Municipality to stay open during the day in the month of Ramadan.

As we walked through the mall we noticed it was strangely quiet, then realised there was no music playing anywhere - not in the shops and not in the mall itself. It was so quiet I could even hear some of the shop assistants chatting to each other as I walked past! It's funny how you never notice something, but once it's gone, it's so obvious? Throughout the month, music is not played in public until iftar, when only soft background music is permitted. Live bands and dancing is forbidden during this period so nightclubs usually just shut down for the whole month.

It's lucky that I just live one street away from the mall, because we had no choice in the end but to buy a couple of salads from Carrefour and taking it back to my place to eat! Not what I had in mind at all for treating Joy to a Birthday lunch!