You know you’re in a quality hotel when the sign on the back of your room’s door doesn’t denote the best course of exit in the event of a fire, but rather tells you where to locate the condoms.

“HAY PRESERVATIVOS EN EL SERVICIO DE LA PRIMERA PLANTA,” read the sign in my room in Seville, Spain. It was translated into English, too: “THERE ARE PRESERVATIVES IN THE BATHROOM ON THE FIRST FLOOR..”

Yup, that’s what they call rubbers in Spain. Preservativos.

Which makes for a pretty funny English translation faux-pas. But believe me, that faux-pas works both ways. In French, condoms are called ‘preservatifs.’ Predictably, I learned this little language lesson the hard way.

When I was first studying French a few summers ago in Toulouse, I found myself enjoying a fine bottle of red wine with a group of French friends.

Proud to be eeking out my first few solid French phrases in a bonafide conversational setting, I decided to try to explain to the group that I really liked the reds in France because they never leave me with the awful hangover I get from red wine at home. When there was a pause in the table chatter and I had the group’s attention, I worked up the nerve to recite the line I’d been saying over and over in my head.

At the top of my List of Places I Would Love To Visit But Eh Probably Won’t is Dubai. Some time ago, I met a good looking girl who passed along an article on the city written by George Saunders.

I highly recommend reading the article, but for those of you who eschew recommendations absent of hyperlinks, here is the summary: In the middle of the desert exists the most perfect place in the world where one gets the feeling money actually can buy love, especially if you love sunshine, sand and obscene luxury. This is a city that, in 2006, officially changed its weekend to Friday and Saturday, as a convenience to its tourists. Let’s see Cleveland do that.

After I read it, I immediately emailed her:

“I am now going to become a news reporter specializing in Dubai. I am fairly certain that the only “news” I would report would be items like “Everyone is Still Happy” and “Nuclear Bomb Hits Middle East; Dubai Magic Shield Withstands Blast, Radiation.”

The vast dessert, with its man-made coastlines is like a rich man’s Vegas. But instead of going there to lie in the sun and gamble, people go to lie in the sun and swim (Scrooge McDuck-style) in giant pools of gold. And since gambling is prohibited, nobody bets their rent on a dumbass pair of 9s and then has to sleep in their Ford Escort (stupid, Dan, stupid).

Home to the world’s only six star hotel, what Dubai lacks in tradition it makes up for in opulence. What’s the extra star for? Chauffeured Rolls Royces, 24-hour butler service, a private reception desk on every floor, and dancing girls, tons of dancing girls.* (And not the cheap kind offered by the Hiltons.)

Dubai’s latest shrine to overindulgence is an underwater hotel – Hydropolis, from the Latin “hydro” meaning water, and “dropolis” meaning cliché. And why, you ask, would anyone want to hold their breath all vacation? To experience the joy of finally realizing that Little Mermaid fantasy, of course. Or, perhaps, to lure that pretty girl with great taste in foreign cities away for a $10,000 weekend of fun. Although something tells me, eh, I could probably have her for half that.

* This fact has not been verified. But will be.

- by Dan Murphy of [redacted] fame