Dubai

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It was a chilly English morning, 0 degrees in fact, and after scraping the ice off our hire car we left Northampton at 7.30 am and set off for what we thought would be a 90 minute trip to Heathrow to catch our flight to Dubai. Unfortunately there was some serious traffic on the M1, and three hours later we dropped our hire car off and made a mad dash to check in. After finding out British Airways had no record of our preferred seating, or in fact of anything to do with our membership of the One World alliance (they wanted to charge us extra baggage at one stage), they allocated us two of the last 5 seats remaining, right down the back of the plane near the toilets(definitely not our favourite airline). When we finally arrived at Dubai airport (definitely the busiest airport we have seen), it was after midnight local time and still a very pleasant 26 degrees. We were told it reaches 52 degrees in summer here so thankfully we didn't have to endure those temperatures.

Dubai was interesting, although we weren't able to utilise our three days there very effectively as firstly our accomodation wasn't quite as centrally located as the internet site led us to belive (it was supposed to be in Bur Dubai but in reality it was a 15 minute walk), and we also had to spend a day in dicussions with American Airlines about our next flight to Singapore via Hong Kong as for some reason they had cancelled our seats. At one stage we spent a very long 2 hours in their local office waiting for our new tickets to print (or perhaps they were being flown over from the States!).

Anyway travel problems aside we did manage to see a bit of the city. We spent the first day recovering from the flight and jetlag and just wandering around the area where we were staying. After that we did the tourist bus tour, which was really the only way to see most of the sights as they are spread over such a large area. We drove through the main city area, and then out along the beaches to the famous 7 star Burj Al Arab Hotel, although it was surrounded by mist when we were there. We then drove back to the centre of the city past numerous shopping centres and past the site of the Burg Dubai tower, which will be the largest building in the world when it is completed in 2009.

We also wandered around the famous gold souk (markets) which is comprised of 350 small shops all trying eagerly to get your business, and crossed the river on one of the many Abras, which are small boats that transport people from one side of the river to the other. Apart from that we spent a few hours wandering around a couple of the shopping centres.

All in all Dubai was an interesting place to visit, although it is fair to say that it is still very much under construction. We were told that 17% of the world's cranes are currently located in Dubai (hard to believe) and everything they are building is going to be the biggest in the world (the biggest shopping centre, the tallest building, the biggest indoor ski slope etc).

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Photos

The Burg Al Arab Hotel
The world's first 7-star hotel

Sitting on an Abra
These are small passenger boats that take you from one side of the river to the other. You simply hop on, and once the boat is full the skipper takes off and heads across the river.