Dubai: A Modern City with History
We are on the last leg of our around-the-world trip. Two long flights on Emirates Airlines, with a brief two-day stop in Dubai. We settled into our Emirates Business Class seats (much nicer business class seats then we have ever seen), and headed out on out 13-hour flight to Dubai. We checked into the Sheraton Dubai Creek Hotel with a fabulous view of the waterway and Dubai skyline. The morning and night Dubai skyline photos below were taken from the deck of our room. The afternoon we arrived we took the hotel shuttle to the famous Dubai Mall. This is the largest mall we have ever seen at 3.77 million square feet with over 1,200 stores! Every major world brand has a store. Don’t go there looking for a bargain, almost all of the stores on the main floor (BTW there are three floors) have guards because the goods are so expensive. The Tiffany store is department store sized, right at the mall entrance. Liz and I worked our way up to the third floor and actually bought a few things.
We had prearranged for a tour guide to show us Dubai with the one full day we had there. Our guide was wonderful, we saw as much of Dubai as anyone could in one day. In addition, we learned a lot about Dubai because our guide Barti was so knowledgeable about Dubai’s history and the amazing growth they have seen in less than two decades. We started our tour at the Dubai marina, a completely manmade 20-foot-deep marina dredged out of the existing sand plains. The builders were worried about a continuous dredging requirement to keep the marina depth, so the actually tiled the entire marina floor! Next, we visited Palm Island. A manmade island built with a palm tree footprint in the sea. It’s an amazing development. We visited the Dubai Atlantis Hotel, a sister hotel to the Bahamas Atlantis Hotel. It is right at the tip of the tree facing the Persian Gulf, and the Burj Al Arab Hotel, the famous Dubai Hotel shaped like a sail. We then went to Burj Khalifa, the tallest structure and building in the world since its topping out in late 2008. It has 163 floors! We visited the viewing deck in the 124th floor. A number of the photos below were taken from there.
After lunch we visited the Spice Souq, a huge spice market where you can get any kind for spice or natural concoction that you desire. We saw a bunch of strange things we have never seen before. Then, we walked over to the Gold Souq. It’s an outdoor gold market with more gold and gems in one place then we have even seen! There must be as much as 100 jeweler shops there. It was so overwhelming that Liz didn’t buy anything. After a while she just wanted to get out of there. That was the last stop on our tour. The darkness told us it was time to get back to the hotel and get to bed. I had to wake Liz up at 4:00am so we could head to the airport at 5:00am to catch our early flight.
Miles traveled on this trip to date: 22,242. Number of days on this trip to date: 33
