So this weekend our 30 day visitor visas ran out and because mummies residence visa is taking forever we all had to go and do a visa run, which sounds really dodgy but without the stamp and scribble you turn into an alien - mummy says an illegal immigrant, but my friend Grace (she’s 6) says an alien - and because I don't want to turn into an alien, "aliens have more eyes than me, only three fingers, I don't wanta be green" we went and had our passports stamped, daddy says that "it is just a money making thing" and Grace's mummy says "it would never work in England".
So anyway on with (Eva's bedtime) story -
We booked our normal taxi (Wahdi) to come and collect us between 9:30 and 10:00 Friday (which I remind you is the first day of weekend here) but he arrived at 8:30 -sods law normally he is spot on or 5 minutes early but an hour, uhhh I had only just got up and mummy was running around looking for everything and telling me to get dressed - which normally I am really slow and mummy or daddy helps me but this morning I could tell that I should be a big boy so I got myself dressed all by myself and I even changed the top that mummy had got out for me because I wanted to wear my pink one.
Once we went to the Hilton hotel in Al Ain (marked with a blue square on the map) (which is an hour long drive from our place), and booked into the hotel dumped our bag and then swapped into Wahdi's mates taxi who then drove us to the Al Ain border (marked with a yellow and red square nearest to the blue square) where we had to walk through the drive through passport check points as the pedestrian one was shut, then through customs then turned left to a little porta-cabin in which was an armed policeman and two Arab women sat behind desks, we handed over our passports, paid 30 AED (which is about 5 pounds) each so they could stamp our passport to enable us to exit the country even thou we already were on Oman soil/sand. We then were given a very poor attempt of a map but basically we were told to get into another taxi to go to the Oman border (marked with the other yellow squares, we went to the one with the red square inside) which was shockingly a further 20 km away (which meant we were aliens). So anyway we got into another taxi making the fatal mistake of not haggling the price first, once the door shut mummy realised this and struggled to speak to the taxi driver who kept saying "me speak no English, I take you stamp and back 200 AED", which in mummies eyes was too much (as mummy had done her research and knew the basic price), but he knew exactly what my mummy was saying as after 5 minutes of my mummy not giving up he gave his phone to her to speak to another Arab who spoke as much English as the driver did the two of them were playing a good game of 'no understand' but unfortunately for them they hadn't played it with my mummy before and she ALWAYS wins, so after some choice Arabic words from mummy the driver dropped his price to 150 AED. Once we were at the Oman border we entered a massive marble building followed the taxi driver to the desk handed over our passports and asked for 'entry and exit', daddy then had to fill in a form for each of us, paid some more money 60 Omani rial (which is 600 AED, which is about 100 pounds) and our passports were stamped another two times (1 for entering Oman and 1 for exiting Oman) we then got back into the taxi and rode back to the Al Ain border and more importantly the little porta-cabin (with the same two women and policeman)where our passports were stamped for the last time to enable us to enter the UAE again (a whole 40 minutes later), that must be one of the shortest trips to another country any of us have ever done, but having said that in 30 days me and daddy (hopefully not mummy - as her visa MIGHT be through by then) will have to do it again, daddy says that next time will be quicker because he is going to drive, maybe over the next couple of months/visa runs we could go for a record or something.
So that was the boring bit out of the way we could return to the Hilton for lunch and chilling by the pool. For lunch we went to one of their restaurants on site called 'Flavours' which basically is a yummy buffet with food form every part of the world (classic roast potatoes to tagine) it was yummy and with the added bonus of it being 'eat as much' we had pretty much a bit of everything in some cases (many gobble guts mummy) had not just seconds or thirds but fifths of some things and the total with drinks came to an outrageous price of 30 pounds (TOTAL!!! for everything food and drink). 
After our yummy lunch we went and checked out the pool and park, I know it’s hard to believe when you look at these photos but I was really enjoying myself and so was my mummy (yes she was actually there, I know there are a lack of photos of her but she is behind the camera) and daddy.
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