We couldn’t have had a better start to our last stop of the trip, Singapore yesterday. Riding off the high of last nights light dinner and drinks at Atlas we slept in this morning. I think the shades for the room didn’t open up until after 10 AM when Jake and I went downstairs in search of Starbucks and a cool coffee shop. We found both. We started off at Starbucks where we bought Jenn her 5th mug of the trip for Singapore and a blueberry muffin. After that we walked back to our hotel and went to the very hip coffee shop Joe & Dough where Jake had a their specialty coffee and I had a cappuccino.

One of my biggest goals of 2019 has been to be more grateful. Its taking the couple of minutes each day to realize everything that I have in my life and how fortunate and lucky I am. Coming off of yesterday where we spent three hours at the Dharavi slums and then came back to the 5* resort at the Four Seasons Mumbai to then get pampered in the spa and have a fancy Indian dinner isn’t lost on me. Nor is the fact that this morning we were picked up from said resort in a BMW to take us to the Mumbai International Airport to go on a five hour journey from Mumbai to Singapore, when most of our tour guides or hotel staff we talk to have never left their home country.

I cannot tell you how great it felt to spend some time relaxing yesterday. After a lot of tours / activities over the last ten days or so it was nice to come back to the hotel and enjoy the facilities. This morning we were up early again. Jake and I went to breakfast (while Jenn continued to sleep) where he had waffles and I stuck with my cappuccino. A little before 9 AM we made our way down to meet our tour guide Nano who took us to our van to drive us to the Dharavi Slums in Mumbai, the highest populated slum in the world.

We’ve been so fortunate to have absolutely perfect weather from the day we left New York (which feels like ages ago) to the moment we went to sleep last night in Mumbai. But that all changed this morning with the welcoming of monsoon season here in India. We’re fortunate we weren’t here a week ago when they had their worst floods in recent history but we woke up to good rain that only increased when we went down to breakfast.

I sure wish work weeks went as fast as vacation weeks. Just like that our near weeklong stay in the UAE came to a close this morning. We all slept in and tried to take advantage of our beautiful room before going to the airport. Jake and I did make a run to the Starbucks that was maybe a five minute walk from the hotel.

We didn’t arrive back to our hotel room last night until close to midnight and I think it wasn’t until 1 AM that the last glow of Jake’s iPhone went off and we all fell asleep. Unfortunately we had a relatively early morning this morning to finish up our last full day in the United Arab Emirates. Jake and I went to an early breakfast while Jenn got ready and at 9:30 AM we were off into a taxi and on our way to Pier 7 at the Dubai Marina.