So yeah, you'll never guess what we did yesterday afternoon?

We had High Tea at the Burj al-Arab hotel.

You know, the 7-star Burj al-Arab.

The Burj al-Arab that costs something like $2000 a night for a room.

That Burj al-Arab.

And you all thought my middle initial of "P" stood for "Paul". Really? It stands for "Pretentious".

In all seriousness, we went to the Burj al-Arab yesterday for tea.

See Liz has a bunch of friends in visiting this week, two friends from college and their mens. They're staying at our apartment with us - the four of them - so when you add Liz and me and throw in the two cats it's like an episode of "The Real World". There are just people everywhere. Animals or suitcases underfoot at all times, clothes on hangers all willy-nilly. And the glasses of water! Oy! It's like we're living with that little girl from the movie Signs.

Anyway, when they were planning their trip out here someone threw out the idea of going to the Burj al-Arab for tea. And Liz, having lived in Dubai for four-and-a-half years has never been. Well, that sealed it.

Now me? High Tea is not really my scene, I'm more of a wings and draft beer at CJ McThirstys kind of guy myself. But the Burj is so exclusive and so well known, well, I had to go.

Plus I really, really was looking forward to driving the Toyota Echo over the super-exclusive bridge to the super-exclusive island to hand the keys to some super-exclusive valet. Porsche, Ferrari, Maybach ... Echo ... hahahaha!

A few fun facts:

* The Burj is the world's tallest hotel at 1053 feet - or, at least it will be for the next few months - they're building a taller hotel in, you guessed it, Dubai.

* The Burj is on an island about 900 feet out into The Gulf.

* The atrium in the Burj is the world's tallest, at 590 feet.

I took a ton of photos, but they're on slide film so I'm not sure if anyone in Dubai can develop them or not. So I also took a few with Liz's digital camera, which I put up over here at my Flickr Page.

The tea itself was fine - actually I had coffee. But the meal was something like seven courses of little finger sandwiches and sweets over the course of about three hours. We actually were sitting in the atrium looking up the whole time. I wish I had my photos right now, but you can google this: the landings on each floor are painting a different color, a different shade. So it starts in a royal blue color and slowly goes to teal and then yellow. It's fantastic.

I'm really not one for showy things, sometimes they actually make me nervous. I was actually dreading going to tea for a bit yesterday afternoon. I hate pretention. I really do. But the afternoon turned out to just having tea with a couple of friends. In a redonkulously expensive hotel.

But good company? You can't buy that with all of the money in the world.