Dubai - Jewel of the UAE

Dubai is one of seven countries forming the United Arab Emirates (UAE).  The city Dubai is the largest and most famous city within the country of Dubai and possibly the Middle East. Dubai is an incredible city for several reasons.  First it is a architectural Disney World. If you can imagine it, it's built here.  Second, it has all been done in less than 25 years.





Prior to 1990 there were only one or two tall buildings.  Another thing that stands out is how clean the city is, you just do not see trash laying around.  One thing that was disappointing about the city was the "haze" or "smog" that restricted the view and made taking good pictures a real problem.






Now let's take a look at some of the fantastic architecture, we will start with tall and beautiful buildings, the tallest is the Burj Khalifa.  This building has 163 floors, making it over a half mile tall!  We went up to the observation deck on the 124th floor, WOO HOO!  I wish we would have videoed the floor level display as it counted up on the way to the observation deck.








Burj Al Arab is billed as the only 7 Star Hotel in the world, they may be right!  Not as tall as other structures in Dubai, it stands out as being one of the most pleasing to look at.  It's sail like design, simple shape and location on it's own island make it stand apart from the others.







The Atlantis on the Palm Jumeirah is another fabulous hotel in Dubai.  For an unusual family vacation you can interact with dolphins at the Atlantis.  If we ever came back, I think this is where I would like to stay (I would need to borrow some money, please make your checks payable to Tom Neimeyer...).  This is where we caught the helicopter and flew around Dubai seeing all the wonderful sights.


Moving on to other incredible design/construction achievements, the Palm Jumeirah is one in series of man made islands in the shape of a palm trees called The Palm Islands.  They are so large they can be seen and identified from the Space Station in orbit.  When completed there will be three different "Palms", two are already visable. Here is a link to it in Google Maps.





The World is another series of man made islands off the UAE coast.  At this time there is only two buildings on these islands, the financial crisis of 2008 has slowed down construction/development but it is expected to take off again soon.  The prices of the islands start at 10 million and go up. We'll take two, please!




These links do not do justice to these magnificent works of art.  I strongly encourage you to look on You Tube or the web and learn more about these incredible places.  Additionally there are a hundred other buildings of various sizes and shapes that grab your attention and make you say WOW that's neat.  Click this Google link to see what I mean.




Malls in Dubai
I want to mention two of the major malls in Dubai, The Mall of the Emirates and the Dubai Mall.  The Mall of the Emirates is no longer the largest in the world but it is incredible.  It has a ski slope and winter playland inside the mall.



The Dubai Mall is currently the largest mall in the world and is very impressive.  I don't think it can all be seen in one day.  Within the mall is a huge Aquarium and Underwater Zoo as well as a ice skating rink.  Every major brand of shoes, clothing and jewelery is housed here.  There are over 40 different confectionery and chocolate shops alone.  In total there are over 1200 shops.

We mostly used cabs to get around the city, cab fare is reasonable and it's easy to find a cab when you need one.  Dubai also has a metro system but it serves the main highway area and does not go out to all the beach areas.  Most of the cab drivers we talked to were from Pakistan living here alone, their families back in Pakistan.  They related to us how difficult it is in Pakistan at this time, things like raising your children, seeing that they get a good education and problems with the Taliban.  I recently read somewhere that there are more "service" workers in Dubai than there are citizens.

The predominate language we heard spoken was English.  You would hear other languages spoken but every service worker and store clerk we interacted with spoke fairly good English.  All the restaurant menu's were in English as well as most of the signs.

As always it was nice to see people dressed in Western style clothing (short pants, skirts & sleeveless blouses) although there were a quite a few men and women dressed in Thobes and Abayas.

Here is a picture taken of us immediately after our helicopter tour.

There were a lot of water falls, water sculptures and other water features around town and inside the malls.  The divers in the Dubai Mall were very nice.  Hotels like the Burj Al Arab had several different water features on different floors.  Often they are computer controlled and can cycle through many different displays, shooting water in many different directions and patterns. 



We went to the Gold and Spice Souks.  The Gold Souk was huge, I would speculate over 200 shops selling gold and silver jewelery.  We walked up and down several streets looking at necklaces, we never found exactly what we wanted.  Every few steps you are approached by peddlers trying to get you to look at their shop.  They ask you " You want to buy fake watch?  You want ladies handbag? You need Pashmina scarf?".  This goes on, over and over as you walk down the street.  The Spice souk is not as bad but you are still under constant pressure to look at and buy their goods.

On the way over we flew on Fly Dubai airlines they had a great safety video, very cute.

This is a picture of the sunset from the beach in front of our hotel, the Sofitel Jumeriah Beach.  We walked along the beach picking up shells and enjoying the cool water around our feet.



TJ & EA about to go back to KSA