I feel like I'm a somewhat seasoned traveller, however a glaringly missed destination from my list has been the Middle East. We hear lots of bad stories and stereotypes about this part of the world, so I thought I'd put it to the test. This past March my husband and I spent a week exploring the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain.

We started our adventure with the long trip to Dubai (U.A.E.), flying Northwest/KLM from Milwaukee to Detroit to Amsterdam to Dubai. All told with airport waits, about a 24 hour trip in coach class. I could talk in length about the virtues of each of these places, but to make life easy here's the short of our highlights / must sees.

In Dubai we visited the Burj Al Arab; the world's only 7 star hotel. It's about $2000/night and up for a room, and you can't get into the hotel without a room or meal reservation, so we opted for afternoon tea ($100/person) and truly enjoyed feeling papmered. We also spent some time at the beach, which is wonderfully kept, and has crystal clear waters. A lot of our time was spent exploring Dubai, as it is easy, safe and affordable. We explored a touristy souk (shopping area) as well as a more traditional/local one. Both were fun, however the local souk was a great place to test our hand at barganing for a great price. This is a world-class city with every cuisine one can imagine. We opted for a lot of local / middle-eastern cuisine and enjoyed the hookahs available at most places to try to wonderful flavors of shisha.

Using Dubai as our centrepoint, we also did day trips to Oman and Bahrain flying on a low-budget carrier called Air Arabia. We found Bahrain to be very similar to Dubai from a modern-city perspective. As with Dubai, we felt very safe and found all people to be extremely friendly.

For our trip to Oman, we hired a day-guide from Desert Thunder Oman, and planned a day of visiting the mountains and desert. This truly exceeded our expectations. This is a country I'm dying to go back to because of the warmness of the people and the gorgeous surroundings. The mountains were jagged and awesome, with dry riverbeds (wadis) throughout that we off-roaded on. The desert was breathtaking and we also did some heart-stopping dune-bashing that couldn't last long enough. Since we had the luxury of a local bedouin guide, we ensured that the food we ate was local (and cheap), which gave us the true flavors of the country.

I could literally write paragraphs on this trip, however I'm sure most OMC readers aren't looking for an essay. In short, I found all stereotypes of the middle east smashed in one swift trip. Never have I experienced such warmness from locals, openness to other cultures and true pride in what they've accomplished as countries. As with any country we visit, we made sure to learn a few polite words in Arabic and tried to be respectful of cultural norms (I didn't cover my head, but didn't show lots of upper leg and shoulders to be respecful, as a woman).

Flying home after our trip I was so happy to have found a place that I will definitely visit again, but also sad that so few people know how wonderful it is.