January 30th - Dubai, UAE

We had a fabulous day in Dubai!  We went on a private tour with a guide I found through Tours with Locals and it turned out to be a great decision.  Our guide, Vinod, was great and we saw a lot of the city.  A little too much for one blog post so I’m talking about the highlights of ‘new’ Dubai today and I’ll do old Dubai tomorrow.

First some fun facts about our guide and the city…  

Vinod is from India.  He has been in Dubai for 22 years.  He can never become a citizen and every two years he has to reapply (and pay a fee) to stay here.  The native Dubaians are in the minority as most people here come from somewhere else.  Non-natives can only buy property in certain areas like the condos along the Palm development or at the Marina.  Natives can rent their homes to non-natives.  There is free medical for everyone legally permitted to be here.  When workers are brought in like for a new building project, they are provided a salary, a shared place to live, free medical and of course they pay no taxes although a 5% Value Added Tax was implemented for everyone just a couple of years ago.

The police cars are Maserati’s, Lamborghini’s and the like.  We did not see one police car all day.  There is very little crime.  The city is spotless, no litter no graffiti.  If Disney World were a city it would be Dubai.  We did see plenty of expensive cars everywhere.  You name the expensive brand; we saw it today.  Some of their EMT’s use motorcycles to get around the city to provide immediate help to someone waiting for an ambulance.

This is the tallest building in the world, the Burg Khalifa at 162 stories.

It’s has a mixture of residences, office space, a hotel and restaurants.  You can go up to the observation deck on the 124^th floor or for a little more money up to the one on the 148^th floor.  We considered doing this but timing was a problem.  It’s not cheap at any time you go but during the morning and evening, when it would have been better for us, it is downright expensive.  People love to go up and see the sunrise and sunset.  We were happy just to see it.  Vinod got us to this area just in time to capture the fountain show that takes place near the building.  Lucky for us.

Everything in Dubai is the tallest, most expensive, best thing ever because they can afford it.  Although the area originally got its money from pearl diving it is oil that made this area rich and able to pretty much build whatever they want.  Oil was discovered in the 1960’s and since then there has been a building boom going on.  Below are pictures of the Marina area with the famous twisted building.  This area was nothing, desert, before 2003 and then they decided to develop it and in six years-built dozens of skyscrapers mostly condos and office space.  They manufactured the canal and made the marina.  Amazing stuff!

We visited the Mall of Emirates home to Ski Dubai.  We’ve seen pictures of this on TV of course but they never show the play areas at the base of the hill.  They have snow slides, plastic balls you get in and go down hill and other things to keep people entertained.  In case you’re wondering, the helmets, snow boots and jackets are included in the price of the ticket.  To give you an idea of the prices, 200 AED is about $55 USD.

The Jumeirah area is where you’ll find the world’s only 7-star hotel (at least according to them), the Burj al-Arab.  A beautiful hotel near the beaches.  If you want to stay here the best suites go for $15,000 a night.  On either side of the beach where we were standing more land reclamation work was being done to build additional hotels.  The land that the al-Arab is sitting on was reclaimed from the sea by filling it in. 

One of the more famous examples of land reclamation is the Palm Jumeirah. This is not my picture, just one I found.

We drove up the ‘trunk’ of the Palm and it was surprising how big the road was.  I don’t know what I was expecting but I certainly didn’t think a major highway was going down the center of this reclaimed area.  Off to the side are the branches with private homes, you’re not allowed down there.  Along the center road there are condos and along the crest of the palm are hotels, the biggest of which is the Atlantis.  This looks exactly like the Atlantis in the Bahamas.

 Vinod showed us where we were on google earth...

One thing I have to mention is the simple technology in all their parking garages that would make life easier for all of us if it were implemented around the world.  The garages have sensors over each parking space, when someone parks in a spot the sensor turns a little light red, meaning occupied.  Green is unoccupied.  This way you can look down a row of cars and see immediately where spaces are available.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  They also have indicators at the ends of the rows that tell you the number of spaces available.  Anyone who has driven up and down rows in a parking garage (and that would be most of us) would love to see this in all garages.

Our last stop of the day was the Dubai Mall, either the largest or second largest mall in the world (I know I heard it, I just don’t remember it).  It has over 1200 stores some unique others are brands famous all over the world.  It also has an aquarium and an ice rink.  It’s connected to the metro and has a huge garage attached with the neat technology I mentioned above (not that I’m obsessed with that or anything).  They even had an American Girl store!

There are hundreds of restaurants at the mall so I’m slightly embarrassed to say we ate at the Cheesecake Factory.  For those who don’t know this is an American chain restaurant usually found in upscale malls.  The nearest one to us back home is about 75 miles away so it’s a treat when we see one…we had to go even though I know it’s wrong…we might as well have eaten at McDonalds.

Before you get too tired of buildings (I know too late) we have The Frame.  This building is purpose built for tourism.  You go up to the top and walk across to see the view.  The floor of the walkway is glass so that adds a little fun to the exercise.  Our guide told us they used to let anyone over age 60 do it for free…but they forgot about cruisers coming to the port.  They are all over 60 so they had to revise the admission policy and it now costs some to get up there.

Tomorrow we have half a day in Dubai, all aboard is 12:30 and that doesn’t give you a lot of time given the traffic in the area.  We may stay close to the port.  Tomorrow I’ll write about old Dubai.