Tonight we're going to see Cirque du Soleil's Quidam, playing in the Ibn Battuta Mall parking lot.
It'll be easier to tell the backstory of the tickets today, so I can comment on the show and tell stories tomorrow.
In the spring of last year I met some of my Los Angeles friends in Las Vegas for a weekend. Actually my brother took me - I was too broke from the crummy job I had in Portland to pay my own way. It was sort of a bachelor party, but my cousin Karen was going, and this is me we're talking about, I'm not the kind of guy who wants a "bachelor party" anyway.
So Liz has never been to Las Vegas, and asked what we had planned and generally what the deal with Vegas is. I told her about the restaurants, the bars, the stupid opulence of the hotels (which are in the same class as Disney and Dubai, really). And I mentioned there's a Cirque du Soleil show on ever corner.
That's when Liz told me she'd always wanted to see a Cirque du Soleil show.
File that away in my brain.
Later in the spring we were talking honeymoon. For a brief nanosecond I was kind of keen on going to the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, but I knew that wouldn't be Liz's first choice. So I scoured the internet for images of the different resorts that didn't scream "Disney". I ended up finding a dozen good ones of the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, with it's Victorian-inspired look and fancy spa things. Then the last photo had a much-too-excited adult family eating dinner at one of the posh restaurants at dusk ... with Cinderella's Castle is in the background.
I thought it was clever, like. "surprise, it's Disney!"
We actually considered a honeymoon there for a little bit. I also told Liz that Downtown Disney has its own Cirque show.
That caught her attention the most, I'd say.
Anyway, we ended up going to Mauritius in our honeymoon and had a great time.
Then in December I read in the paper that Cirque de Soleil is coming to Dubai in January.
Can you say, "Perfect first Christmas present to your wife?"
I did, however, get lucky. Liz thought that it was a limited-limited engagement show that was ONLY playing around the new year ... when we were out of town. So while I was trying to play it cool everytime we saw a poster, billboard, banner or ticket booth, Liz had already written off even the possibility of going to the show. So I didn't even have to be tricky, really.
Needless to say, on Christmas morning when Liz opened the present, she was very surprised, and I was pretty happy.
Anyway, tomorrow we'll let you know it all went! See you then!
