Don’t you love how unexpected/wrong tuns end up with wonderful and surprising finds? We were out for lunch earlier today (the husband don’t want me to cook on my day off…cough) and on our way home, we got into a little of traffic on the way to Al Ittihad Road. My husband took a detour and drove back towards Deira City Center onto Port Saeed area.

We passed by Al Serkal Building – that gothic style building in Deira with classic cars inside the ground floor, as seen from outside. He drove us there but the security guard said the building is closed on Fridays and Saturdays, otherwise, it’s free to enter and take a look at the owner’s interesting collection of vintage and collector’s item cars from his travels all around the world, including Phillippines’ unique makeshift bus called the jeepney!

So since Al Serkal building was closed, we entered the building right across the street. It’s a unique looking building – round and cylindrical and there’s a Piccolo Mondo Avenue Cafe on the facade.

That’s the Google map for you in case you want to seek out and find it.

The restaurant and cafe had two floors, the lower floor served buffet lunch (for 49 dirhams!) but no one was there…which was a waste because never mind the food, I think it was nothing special but the ambiance was something out of the ordinary. There are collections of art and objects which are personal collection of the owner himself.

Piccolo Mondo Avenue from Sandier Pastures on Vimeo.

The ground floor was a little dark for my taste so we headed out on the first floor through a wooden spiral staircase with art and more art on the walls…

The upper floor was…something. The glass roof let in so much natural light from outside.

I like this wall with all the quote art.

If you live in Dubai, you all know that a wrong turn could mean loss of precious time. But today, we didn’t care about the time since it’s the weekend and we had fun with our accidental find.

 

Accidental finds in Deira.

A photo posted by Grace | Sandier Pastures (@sandierpastures) on Apr 22, 2016 at 3:09am PDT

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Our afternoon nap time was cut off a bit but we did love discovering a place unexpectedly. We’ll have to go back and eat there or something.

I feel pity there was really no one there but the waiter on duty folding napkins said “don’t worry Madam, this place gets packed at night for shisha”.