The quest for The Ring

We had an excellent week in Rome and the plan was that a fortnight later we would be off to Budapest for yet another week so that I could introduce the other half to the country of my parents.

But, as things are wont to do, plans changed a few days after we had got back. As I mentioned before, I hadn't bought a proper engagement ring as not even the other half had any idea of what type of ring she'd like (when I'd surreptitiously raised the point in the past) so we'd thought that the weekend before we headed back off on holiday we'd go down do Hatton Garden ("the centre of London’s jewellery trade since way back in the mists of medieval time" according to their website) and see if we could find a ring there.

But then someone at work mentioned that buying a ring in Dubai, even with the cost of flying out and staying there would still work out saving us a lot more over Hatton Garden's prices. I did a bit of research on the interwub and sure enough a lot of others seemed to be saying the same thing.

So on the Thursday, we did a crazy thing, booked a flight and hotel out there and come Friday night we were flying out on a madcap scheme to get a ring without having the foggiest about the place that we were going to! In fact it was only thanks to a last minute purchase of a Lonely Planet city guide to Dubai at the airport that we even managed to find our way around at all!

Unfortunately the flight out was delayed by an hour thanks to a passenger who'd checked their luggage in but hadn't turned up for the flight (thanks a lot!) and then our luggage took a long time to arrive at the other end too. So rather than turning up at 3 in the morning, we didn't make it to the hotel until almost 5am.

We then got checked into a room only for me to walk in and find someone sound asleep in the bed, snoring away! I switched off the lights and walked out. In so far as I knew, they hadn't woken up. The receptionist apologised profusely and upgraded us to a larger room on the executive floor (which meant that we had to swipe a card through a reader on the lift to get it to stop there, which was pretty cool.)

Dubai was nice too. Very westernised but bloody hot! It averaged over 40 degrees every day and was 45 on our last day there (Monday.) At night it hovered around about 35 degrees.

So, with the help of our trusty guide book, we worked our way around the shopping malls (including one with a 450m ski slope inside) and gold and diamond centres in our hunt for a ring. To cut a long story, slightly shorter, we found one, or rather, got one custom built, on our second day out there.

Due to the fact that we were flying off the next day, the jewellery store manager drove us off to their workshop, ironically right next door to the gold and diamond centre that we had visited the night before, where we sat down in a nice air conditioned room with six Indians who each specialised in a part of the manufacture of our ring. One made the ring itself, another shaped and sized it, another fixed the mounting and measured for the size of the diamonds, another fitted the diamonds and a final one polished the ring. (The sixth guy didn't seem to get involved with our ring.) At each stage we were shown the progress of the ring and looked on approvingly.

The final product was then given to us to take outside and look at in natural sunlight. It sparkled so brightly that I have to admit, it took my breath away. It was beautiful, it was perfect and came in well under the budget that I'd set myself!

I got the certificates of authentication for each of the diamonds (the ring has three, one central and two smaller on the sides) and we left to enjoy the rest of our quick trip in the knowledge that the mission was well and truly accomplished.

To cap off the success story, I got the ring independently valued, just before we went to Budapest and it was valued at easily more than the value that we paid for it plus the price of the trip and boarding.

Cor Blimey!