Dubai, the Old Town and the New

Before we knew it, our alarm clock was going off and our first full "proper" day in Dubai was beginning. We'd decided that as we'd paid for breakfast that we might as well get up early enough to get it, so the alarm was set for 8am to give us plenty of time to wake up, get showered and ready and get breakfast before it closed at 10am. And quite a nice breakfast it was as well, once you get over the slight strangeness of the "sausages" being chicken and the "bacon" being veal - well, we were in a Muslim country, what are you going to do? After breakfast, we decided to head down to the Heritage Village, at the mouth of the creek, while the day was still cool enough to be able to go out walking (a "mere" 28-30 degrees at 10am!). So, we walked the kilometer or so down by the creek-side to the Heritage Village and the neighboring Diving Village. Well, what can I say, they're free in and they're still not worth the price of admission. Maybe in the afternoon there may have been something going on, but at 10:30 in the morning they were ghost towns, apart from us there were 2 guys repairing a wall and 3 very bored stall-owners who couldn't even get up the motivation to hawk us their tourist crap. So, if you have the Lonely Planet guide to dubai, you can pretty much skip the last third of their "Heritage & History in Bur Dubai" walking tour, you ain't missing anything :-P

All was not lost however, on the way back we still had the Sheikh Al-Maktoum house, the Sheikh Bin Thani house and the Architecture Museum to go to. We deliberately had left those until the way backas it meant we'd be inside in (hopefully) air conditioning on the way back when it would be starting to get hot! The Sheikh Bin Thani house was an islamic center, which could pretty much be summed up as "See, Islam isn't that scary, it isn't that much different from the Bible really, and the Qu'ran got a lot of sciency bits right that scientists are only figuring out now". The Sheikh Maktoum house then was mostly a photography exhibit of what Dubai looked like back in the 50s before the building boom took off. Place made Waterford look like a metropolis! The architecture museum, well, pretty much does what it says on the tin really. After browsing around in those for a while, we sauntered back to a restaurant near the the Bur Dubai abra station for a spot of quite tasty lunch (which we picked at random from the menu as we hadn't a clue what anything was!) before heading back to the hotel to regroup before the afternoon's exertions.


Dubai in 1952

In the afternoon, we decided to see the "other" side of Dubai, so we hopped in a taxi and headed out to the Dubai Mall, what is probably the biggest shopping centre in the world. Imagine 1200+ shops, an ice skating rink, an aquarium and 2 waterfalls, all under the one roof! You almost expect someone to greet you on the way in, giving you your complimentary map, compass, and sherpa guide! On the way there you also get to appreciate the Burj Dubai, the world's tallest tower at 160 stories. Is so tall that it still looks big 15km away, in the old city center! But back to the shopping. When we got in, we wandered around a bit and then decide that I'd just be cramping Michelle's style, so we separated and agreed to meet up back at the skating rink in an hour. Thing was, an hour would just about give you enough time to get your bearings in the place and figure out roughly where things were, never mind do any actual shopping! Place has more shops than Dublin city, and is about the same size as Dublin City Center from Parnell St down to Stephens Green - but on 3 floors and all under the one roof!


The aquarium in the mall

As we were meeting Enda again, we just went for a bit of food and then wandered around a bit more before heading out with hm to watch the fountain show. Maybe by now you might have gotten the idea that everything has to be bigger and better in Dubai, well, this even applies to the water fountains! Between the Dubai Mall and the Burj Dubai, there's an artificial lagoon, which has a dancing fountain. If you've seen "Oceans 11", you'll remember the dancing fountain at the Bellagio hotel at the end of the move, well, this being Dubai, its like that only bigger and better (the highest water jets in the world, naturally). Is quite impressive, I'll definitely say that!


The dancing fountain (click to play)

After the water show, we headed to the rooftop bar in the Assembly Hotel, a puny building of a mere 60 floors situated beside the Mall. Or rather we tried to, the prick bouncer wouldn't let us in with sandals on (some things are universal no matter where you are, and bouncers being assholes is definitely one of them). Luckily, Enda lived around the corner so we headed back to his gaff, me & Michelle borrowed some shoes, and we headed back again :-) So, we got to see Dubai by night from the bar (quite nice), the dancing fountain from above (looks better than at ground level), and despite being 60 floors up, we still had to crane our necks to see the top of the Burj Dubai across the lagoon! Seeing Dubai by night from above sort of reinforced that wierd felling I had about the place when I was coming in on the bus: it's all big buildings and bright lights and modern shiny things, but as your eyes travel out to the horizon, it's like someone drew a line and just erased everything beyond it: unlike most cities which just sort of gradually straggle out to the outskirts so you can't really see where the city ends, with Dubai there a definite line where the city ends and the desert begins again. Or maybe that was the mojitos talking. Anyway, after a hard day's touristing and shopping, it was back to the hotel to get ready for the next round - the safari!