Dubai!

Me in front of the Creek in Dubai.

Our second day in UAE we took a jaunt (and by jaunt, I mean 4 hours in a bus there and back) over to Dubai. Dubai is very spread out, and very interesting to see--there are cranes EVERYWHERE! There’s always a lot of construction going on… even through the financial crisis, there’s still lots of building to be done, apparently. We first walked through the Bur Dubai district and went to the Dubai Museum--I really liked their display on archaeological finds (of course) but also their facts about camels (they can go months without water in the winter!). Haggling with some mannequins in the Dubai Musuem.

The Bur Dubai fabric souk.

We walked through the Bur Dubai souk, which had Mum goin’ nuts--it was a fabric souk! After briefly viewing the Creek (this was a creek on steroids, I would have called it a river, but apparently the Emiratis think otherwise) we took a taxi to the Burj Dubai and the Dubai Mall. What is a Burj? you might ask, and I would answer, I have no idea, but maybe it’s Arabic for “The Tallest Building in the World” because that’s what the Burj Dubai is. The Dubai Mall is also the world’s largest mall: it’s four storeys high and has an ice rink, an aquarium, a fountain and waterfall, a food court complete with the UAE’s only Taco Bell, and not to be left out is Fashion Avenue, replete with stores like Hermes, Jimmy Choo, Dior, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, Roberto Cavalli, etc etc etc and some of them even had their doors closed and probably wouldn’t have let me and Mum in if we had tried. I was kinda intimidated. I did buy some clothes there, so I feel minorly fancy. It was really neat to see all of these things, but I was not unhappy to say “bye-bye Dubai” at the end of the day--my bank account was shakin’ in it’s 2nd hand tennis at the sight of those Jimmy Choos.

The Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world at nearly a kilometer high.

Inside the Dubai Mall, looking at part of the aquarium and three of the four floors.