We stayed at the Jumeirah Emirates Towers Hotel, one of Dubai’s soaring symbols last weekend to celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary. After relocating to Dubai, we decided to save up and make it a tradition to stay at a city hotel every year on our anniversary to take a break from our monotonous day to day rush. We started in 2009 at The Palace Hotel and in 2010, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. For all our anniversary getaways, Pristine has always been with us. She loves exploring places – vacations, visiting friends – just going to places different. She LOVES it when we stay at hotels and almost always begs for another day when we are about to check out!

*How in the world did my thunder thighs get in the picture, I don’t know!*

Standing at 309 meters, the Jumeirah Emirates Towers is one of the tallest hotel buildings in the world and the architecture is simply beautiful. In 2007, when we were so new to Dubai, we took a photo just across it and hoped one day we could stay. It took us four years but the wait was really worth it.

Dubai hotels offer a lot of discounts during summer when the deluge of tourists come to a mild halt due to the extreme weather (highs of up to 120F). This is where residents like us do a happy dance. Included in our room stay are complimentary passes to Wild Wadi Waterpark…

….30% off on dining bills at all the restaurants in the hotel and voila, even an anniversary cake!

Pristine and M went to the hotel first since I had to work on the day we checked in and when I arrived, they already consumed almost half of the cake! Oh well, it saved me from overshooting my daily calorie intake.

We were on the 13th floor. The husband didn’t seem to mind that but I slightly did after all, 13 isn’t a favorable number (although my life has been surrounded by a lot of “number 13“). I asked a few people on Twitter and most of them said, they won’t mind and one smartie was quick enough to point that it’s not the 13th floor anyway, if you count the ground floor as 1.

We can see the Dubai International Finance Centre from our 13th floor room window. Everything is so peaceful and quiet on an early weekend morning the next day.

The pool below us looked really nice, if only it wasn’t too hot.

Since my sister is here, we decided to bring her along with my mom and we had adjoining rooms which Pristine would shuttle back and forth and do “stuffs”.

We had a really lovely time and temporarily forgot about our hectic everyday lives outside the walls of the hotel. Who wouldn’t want to stay longer but we all had to go home.

We look forward to another year together and our next breather at a hotel somewhere – with Pristine and a little baby in tow.