Monday in Dubai

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We decided to spend Monday back in Dubai with sightseeing in the city. As Jerome had some things to do, we took a taxi to the Dubai Museum, and agreed on a time to meet later at the Dubai Mall.

The Dubai Museum is located very near to Dubai Creek, the historic location of the heart of the emirate. The museum is exceptionally well done. It appears small from the outside, but has an extensive underground section that one to walk through examples of historic Bedouin camps, towns, etc. An interesting factoid. . . human artifacts have been found in Dubai dating back to at least 5000 years ago. This is consistent with much of this part of the world which has been inhabited, and fought over, for a very long time.

After completing the museum, we walked through the textile souk which is nearby. This is quite large as has many different types of fabrics, tailors, etc. The souk sits on the northern edge of the Creek, where we caught a water taxi to cross to the southern side. This great trip cost all of one dirham, about thirty cents. It’s a good deal!

On the southern side of the Creek are the spice and gold souks. Again, Stephen and I wandered about for a while just looking at stuff. We weren’t in a buying mood (and with the price of gold at nearly $1,200/oz. who could be?) so, we wandered back over to the water taxi to return to the north side once more. Over there we found a pizza restaurant that was very good, and caught a taxi to the Dubai Mall.

Describing Dubai Mall is very difficult. It is, reputedly, the largest mall in the world. Additionally, it has a very large ice rink in which they play hockey and oodles of people were skating while we were there. But probably the most singularly impressive thing about the mall was the aquarium.

Sitting smack dab in the middle of one wing is a very large aquarium. I am not really good at estimating size, but would guess that it was about thirty yards long, fifteen yards wide, and about 45 feet deep. It was jam packed with fish. . . some very large indeed. But perhaps most cool, was that one could go scuba diving in tank. At one point, we saw six divers at the same time just tooling about. These were escorted dives being done by tourists. Incredible.

We looked around for a couple of hours (which is very easy to do), and then met up with Jerome, who showed us the interior gold souk. Outside the mall, is a 30 acre lake and the worlds tallest building, the Buj Dubai. This building is set to open (officially) next month. It is 818 m tall (more than ½ mile), has about 160 floors, and will hold about 300,000 people. And to top it all off, it is very beautiful. As we went outside, there was a choreographed water show with fountains dancing to music. This is a five minute show that occurs each 30 minutes. In this show, water shoots into the air about five hundred feet! Amazing.

We decided to go for a drink in one of the hotels, The Address, which is nearby and from an elevated, outside lounge we could watch the water show. On the way, we saw a television crew set up and I thought it was probably local, or regional, as there was no crowd around watching it. Was I wrong! Each weekday morning in the US, I watch the opening of the New York Stock Exchange on CNBC hosted by two anchors, one of which is Erin Burnett. A lo and behold, here was Erin interviewing CEO’s in Dubai about the loan default of Dubai World. We watched her for a few minutes, and during a lull in the activity, I asked her is she was open to a photo. She responded affirmatively, so Stephen and I got shot (so to speak) with Erin. We then had a drink and a light snack at The Address before returning to Jerome’s apartment.

Once again, it was a superb day. One quick thought. . . Jerome noted that Dubai is a set of one superlative after another. Something or another is either the biggest, most expensive, most innovative, most . . . whatever. And, he is exactly right. It’s a beautiful city in a world largely surrounded by nothing but sand (except for the Gulf side), and yet there is seemingly no end of things to do. My oh my.

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