Saturday 30th August DUBAI
It’s been a long, hot day here, but a good one. We’ve seen
so much of Dubai, and we now know a lot about its history and present.
Last night we both got hit by the dreaded jet lag. The clock
said it was 10 o’clock; our bodies thought it was 7pm. We both tossed and
turned, then turned and tossed. Goodness knows what time it was when we finally
fell asleep, but it felt late. Then our alarm went off at 6.30, because of the
tour we’d booked for today. I checked my emails, saw that we weren’t being
picked up until 8.45, and reset the alarm for 7.30! Lex went back to sleep but
I couldn’t quite manage it.
We hauled ourselves out at 7.30, got dressed, and went down
for breakfast. Again, we could have anything from the huge buffet selection.
Then we got ourselves organised with sunscreen on, plenty of water, and were
down in the lobby waiting for our shuttle bus, which came at about 5 to 9. We
did an ABC tour of Dubai, which cost us $57 AUD each. It was remarkably good
value. From our hotel, we were taken to The Palace hotel (very posh), where we
and a young couple staying there waited for the rest of the tour to arrive in
the main tour bus. This was also the first stop of the day, as it had a lovely
view towards the Burj Khalifa, and we all snapped away happily.
From here, we drove past Dubai’s stunning architecture to the new Museum of the Future, which has recently opened. We had 15 minutes to go into the ground floor and look at it and take photos. 15 minutes was the standard stop on this tour – just long enough to look at things and Whiskey, our guide (not his real name!) would tell us all about them, and advise about them if we wanted to visit later. It’s really a ‘taster’ tour of Dubai.
Next stop was Za’abeel Palace, the official residence of the ruler of Dubai, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. He loves horses, so they feature heavily in the entranceway. The palace is huge, though we could only look from the sweeping drive leading up to it. By now the heat was becoming quite intense while we were out of the bus, and all of the paving didn’t help! It got to 42 or 43 today, so rather like an Emerald heatwave. The Sheik keeps a lovely green area around his palace; Whiskey told us that plants need to be watered 5 or 6 times a day to survive, and I can certainly believe it.
After this, we drove to another new building, The Frame. This is a museum that showcases Dubai’s past and present, so it’s situated between old Dubai and new Dubai. We can see it from our hotel room, but it’s just a dusty square shape in the haze; up close it’s a glorious gold and blue. Again, we just looked and admired from the outside.
From here, we travelled into Old Dubai to the museum complex which is situated in the traditional homes of the Dubai royal family, the Al Shindagha. Both the present Sheik and his father were born there. In the welcoming room, we were given Arabic coffee and dates, which is how visitors are traditionally welcomed. Then we got taken to one of the houses where we saw displays and videos about the history of Dubai Creek and how the modern city has grown up around it. We also enjoyed the perfume house, where we got to smell all the main ingredients for traditional Arab perfumes. After that, we were taken in a little motor cart (thankfully, it was so hot by this stage) to the side of the creek, where we boarded an Abra, the little Arab boats which are used for quick trips on the water. It was lovely; there was actually the first (and last) cool breeze of the day on the water!
We had to wait for our bus to come over to the other bank to pick us up, so Whiskey guided us into one of their air-conditioned bus shelters. Very necessary, a lot of the tourists were noticeably starting to wilt. It was already pretty full, then another group came along, so Lex nobly gave his spot to a young bloke and his wife who were looking pretty distressed. (Hats, people. Hats!!!) Thankfully our bus came along to rescue us, a nice twenty-minute air-conditioned ride to our next stop.
The Al Farooq bin Al Khattar Mosque is, according to
Whiskey, only small, but it can hold 2000 worshippers at a time. Before we went
in, though, we had to don traditional garments, and we women had to cover our
hair as well. There was a good deal of giggling and groaning in the women’s
change rooms as we figured out how to wear our abbayahs. Everyone posed for
photos outside! At the mosque, we had to take our shoes off, then were free to
wander inside and look and take photos. It is a beautiful building with the
traditional Arab decorations – very geometric and plant based. This is a blue mosque,
so the colour blue featured prominently.
From here we drove to the beach – the Persian Gulf. We saw the extremely posh hotel, the Burj Al Arab, and had a short time on the beach near it to take photos. I actually even had a paddle in the gulf, and can report that the water was as warm as a bath. Not at all refreshing! The heat was beating down, so we all headed back to the bus pretty quickly.
From here, we drove to the man-made islands of Palm Jumeirah, where there are even more 5-star swanky hotels for the super-rich. We pulled up on the boardwalk for the last photo op of the day, but by then the heat was quite overwhelming, and the dust haze was so bad you could hardly see much. We and three of the others were transferred back to the shuttle bus, and were brought back to our hotels. It was a surprisingly long way – Dubai is a huge city. It was just after 4 when we got back, so it had been a long day out, and very good value for what we paid. We did learn and see a lot, and it was nice to chat to other travellers, especially a lovely couple from near Edinburgh who are off to South Africa. But if we ever come back here, it won’t be in their summer!
