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Published: March 14th 2007
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Day 54 - Sunday, March 11, 2007, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE)
I have been meaning to publish this webcam site for some time now. Unfortunately, your views while we are in port may not be so wonderful because we are in container ship areas most often. You can see our beautiful days at sea though. http://webcam.princess.com/webcam/QM_bridge.jpg
We arrived in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, very early in the morning, around 4:30 am, on Sunday. We had moved our clocks back yet another hour so it was fairly easy to be up and awake to watch us sail in. It was a rather quiet and uneventful sail in--most likely because we arrived so very early in the morning. Dubai is another of the QM2’s maiden port calls. Our tour was scheduled for very early in the morning—7:15 am. It was nice to get out into the city early before it really woke up! It was a Sunday, but the start of the work week here. Friday and Saturday are the “normal” weekend days here. Due to the incredible amount of building going on here many people work six days per week though. There was a lot of traffic still that
early but we are told that that is very common in Dubai—there is apparently not ever much of a lull in traffic. Dubai is one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates on the Persian Gulf. The official language is Arabic, but English, German, Hindi and many other languages are widely spoken. Dubai has the largest population and is the second largest emirate by area, after Abu Dhabi. With enormous construction and development in various industries, Dubai has attracted world-wide attention through innovative real estate projects (Palm Island, The World projects), sports events (the Desert Open Golf Tournament was just completed), conferences, and Guinness records. If you looked past the souqs, the Dubai creek, and the mosques, Dubai reminded me very much of Las Vegas with all of its buildings rising out of the desert, the greenest of grass and prettiest of flowers where there shouldn’t be any because of the dryness of the desert, the uniqueness of the architecture, and the seeming competition to build the biggest and most unique hotel or shopping mall.. Oh, the shopping malls—any kind you could ever want to visit, with anything you would ever want to buy! First of all
there are the wonderful souqs with anything imaginable—there’s the gold souq, the perfume souq, the carpet souq, the food souqs….and many, many others where you can bargain away for any treasure that you wish to purchase. We definitely did not have enough time! I am not a bargainer. I long for the time to stay in a place long enough to develop this art! Then there are the indoor shopping malls, which are really a good thing in Dubai, with all of their cool marble and trickling fountains, because the summers here can be really oppressive. Temperatures in the summer months can be well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit! If you really want to cool off you can go to the Mall of the Emirates and Ski Dubai! That’s right—a mall with an actual ski slope where you can ski or snowboard the day away! Then there’s the Mercado mall where you can shop in an Italian Renaissance-style shopping center, and so many more. I am not a real shopper but it would be a lot of fun to be able to just go and experience these many different environments in the middle of the desert! Our tour took us first
to the beach where we stood on the sandy beach of the Persian Gulf. This beach just happened to be in front of the Burj Al Arab hotel, a symbol of Dubai, worldwide. From there we went to the Jumeriah Mosque. Unfortunately, there was not time to go in but it is the only mosque in Dubai, where a non-Muslim can visit. Its architecture is stunning and it would have been good to go in. Next time. From there we went to the Dubai Museum which was once the early-19th-century Al-Fahidi Fort, possibly the oldest building in Dubai, and once the residence of Dubai’s rulers and seat of government. The museum had many multimedia displays that that gave us a quick and easy overview of the history of Dubai and was a really good way to our day there. After the museum we went to the spice souq and the gold souq. We decided to depart from our tour here and stay at the souqs rather than go back to the ship—as it was only about 11:20 am. We shopped in the souq and bought a couple of traditional clothing items for the boys. Matt chose the traditional Saudi garments
while Drew chose the UAE garments (See photos). No big gold purchases though. Too much to choose from and too little time! From the souq we walked along the streets to the candy store where the boys found more treats and then we happened upon a post office where we mailed a couple of postcards. After a small boat ride across the creek, we ventured to the new part of Dubai to see one of the famous new shopping malls. Unfortunately, it was not the one with the ski slope in it! We had a late lunch there, looked around a bit and by then it was time to catch our shuttle back to the ship for our early “All Aboard” at 4:00 p.m. We wished we could have stayed to explore some more of the Old and New Dubai. It’s on our return list. This list now I think goes something like this:
1. Hong Kong
2. Dubai
3. Sydney
4. Bora Bora
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