Advertisement
Published: June 26th 2017
Edit Blog Post
Geo: 25.27, 55.33
We arrived in Dubai last night after a 2 and a half hours flight from Amman. It had been a dreadful day in Amman, exremely cold and very foggy. We had stayed in our room until checkout and then were picked up and taken to the airport. We spent about 3 hours in the Royal Jordanian Crown Lounge until we boarded at 4pm.
It was a short ride from the airport to our hotel. This is a great place to stay. It overlooks the Deira Creek which is a large inlet from the sea and is a major port area. When we got into our room we had a fabulous view over the creek where boats, brightly lit and coloured, plied their trade up and down the water. We went for a walk along the Corniche and saw all the dhows which are lined up ready to take goods to other places like India, Iran, Iraq etc. We had shifted 2 hours back in time so we didn't wanrt to go to bed too early so we took advantage of the free WiFi in our room and then went to "The Pub" for a late night drink.
This morning we woke
about 7am and Fletcher found the Test cricket on the local TV sport station. So we were at last able to watch Australia dominate India. We watched until lunch before getting dressed and going down to breakfast. When we returned it was all over! Well at least we saw a little!
We headed out about 10-15am. We discovered that Dubai has a Big Bus which is hop on hop off any time for the day. We had used these before in Helsinki, Vienna, Montreal and Budapest as well as London and had always found them great for getting oriented and seeing important sights, As we have two days here we could buy a 2 day pass for not much more than one and this gave us extras like entry to the Dubai Museum, two different bus routes as well as a Dhow cruise and a water taxi trip. Good value,
Today we did the Red Route which took us around various city sites. We stopped at the Wafi Mall for a look.This is amazingly decorated but full of expensive shops and hardly any customers. A Mall is a Mall is a Mall! The most interesting parts were in the Old City. We
went all the way around and targeted that area to return to in the afternoon.
After lunch in an excellent Italian restaurant which is one of the 10 in our hotel, we caught the water taxi across the Creek to the Dubai Old Souq. Again this is a market like all the others we have seen in our travels. Selling the same type of souvenirs, shawls/pashminas, tacky souvenirs just with Dubai on now instead of Cairo or Jerusalem or Jordan. We've really bought very little on the trip as we do not go travelling to shop!
We then walked to the Al Faahdi Fort. This is an interesting building. It now houses the Dubai Museum which is great. They have models of how life was 200 years ago in Dubai with tableaux depicting aspects of daily life as well as an archaeological section and film showing how Dubai has developed particularly from the 1960s. We then returned as Fletcher's knees were not good today. Tonight we have booked an evening dinner cruise along the creek so we are looking forward to that. Enjoying Dubai especially as I could get around in short aleeves today.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.051s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0321s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb