Dubai Part One: Disneyland for Grownups

Hello!

Martin has a consulting internship right now that has him working out of Dubai, and I got to go visit him this weekend! Beyond being completely fantastic to see him, it was an amazing weekend. I don’t think I would have gone to Dubai without a reason, but it was really cool and we got to do some things we wouldn’t have otherwise.

I worked a Wednesday morning and headed to the airport for my afternoon flight. It was pouring rain and cold in Zurich like it’s been for most of May (we’re in the upper 40s for our highs, Fahrenheit!), so I was extra excited to actually see the sun and maybe get some bloodflow back into my toes.

  

I made friends with the flight attendants on the way there. She just got engaged!

Martin was flying in from Saudi Arabia where his project is located at the same time I was from Zurich, so we met up at the airport around midnight and took a cab home. The airport is on the opposite side of Dubai from the marina, where Martin’s apartment is, so we had about 25 minutes of cab ride to stare out the windows at everything.

This is the Dubai marina! Obviously I did not take this picture.  

The Marina Mall is the round thing in the bottom right on the near side of the water.

Thursday morning we got up and went for a run around the marina. It was great for me to get to see everything, but I have to admit that the 3-mile run nearly killed me because I’m so unused to heat! Going from 40F to 90F plus humidity is a bit of a killer. The marina is a newer area full of high rises surrounding a canal that connects to the sea. We’re close to the famous palm tree-shaped island off the coast of Dubai, and there are lots of restaurants along the water. After the run we went for breakfast at a really fun restaurant in the Marina Mall.

 

At the marina after breakfast! 

There are a lot of malls in Dubai, and they’re a very big deal. I think it’s a combination of air conditioning, awesome construction budgets, and car-based transportation culture (good luck finding sidewalks to wander down!) plus the tradition of having souks, which are basically malls before malls. More on souks later. The malls there have the usual movie theaters and food courts, but some of the bigger ones have theme parks and aquariums (Dubai Mall), or even an indoor ski slope (Mall of the Emirates)!

 

Fish at the Dubai Mall!

 

After lunch we walked to the beach, which is really close to the apartment. The beaches there are pretty amazing; fine sand that’s so light in color it doesn’t burn your feet, very impressive seashells, and the crazy-warm water of the Persian Gulf. Getting in the water—even coming from 90 or 100 degrees plus—isn’t cold at all. You barely feel it on your skin, but it’s still refreshing because of the wind on your skin when you’re swimming. We couldn’t stay long at the beach because I haven’t seen sun in months and there isn’t SPF strong enough for that, but it was okay because we needed to go exploring.

We took the metro to Dubai Mall, which is the biggest and fanciest of them all. I think we saw about 50% of the mall, generously, and we were walking around for hours! The malls are especially interesting because there’s a really varied mix of people in them. The Emirati women and men usually wear traditional clothing, which is white tunics, loose pants, and head scarves for the men and black robes and veils for the women. There’s a fair amount of variation in coverage for the women—everything from only their eyes showing to full face and a couple inches of hair. In general, if you’re in a more formal place (which includes this mall but other malls less so) you should wear “respectful dress,” which means you should cover your shoulders to your knees, or some variation on that. You still see tourists and Western expats in tanks and shorts, but the air conditioning is so much that you’ll probably want to wear either a cardigan over that or longer pants anyway.

 
Dubai Mall waterfall
 

The Dubai mall is seriously enormous, and it’s divided up by what’s being sold. There are “districts” for kids stuff, electronics, and shoes, among lots of other thigns. There are also cinemas, department stores, a food court, an aquarium, an indoor theme park, a children’s playland, and an ice skating rink.

 With the aquarium and the shoe district.

Afternoon tea is a big thing dating back to when the British had control of the area, so there are important-looking tea cafes as frequently as we would see coffee shops. There are also a lot of Western chain restaurants throughout Dubai, like T.G.I. Friday’s, the Cheesecake Factory, Tim Horton’s (hey Canadians!), Chili’s, Johnny Rockets, Baskin Robbins, Subway, and of course Starbucks. I loved seeing how they write the brands and names in Arabic in such a way that the font is the same as the Western version.

 

Starbucks, in both languages!

We did our best with the mall, but there’s only so much you can take and so many times you can goggle at what people are willing to spend on hedgehog-spiked shoes. We left the mall for the plaza and esplanade between it and the Burj Kahlifa—the tallest building in the world. At the plaza, there’s a large pool with a fountain and light show synchronized to music that plays every half hour after 6:30pm. We made it just in time for the 7:30 show, and the song was Whitney Houston’s “I will always love you,” which is a personal favorite. The show was great and we had an excellent viewing spot, I was completely overexcited. You really need to go watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssFJhuXTvUE. Right now. I'll wait.

Burj Kahlifa and its plaza!

You can go to the top of the Burj Kahlifa, but it costs 150 Dirham (about $35) per person to do so. Martin had found out that we could go to the bar one floor below the top for free, but with a minimum drink order of 100 Dirham (about $25) per person. He’d gotten us reservations, so we went through about 5 layers of concierges, receptionists, and elevator guards to get to the top. The view was unbelievable. The building is surrounded by other tall buildings, but it’s more like a tree in a grassland than a forest. We could see all of Dubai lit up below us, and if there had been lights on the ocean and in the desert I’m sure we would have seen the curve of the Earth. The bar knows what it’s good for: our table faced right out a window and the walls were nothing but glass. It was very swank, and we decided that the drinks we ordered were the first time we’d had $20 cocktails that seemed to be worth $20.

 

View pictures never come out but we had to try!

We had those two cocktails and split one more while we sat up there for a couple of hours, but we had dinner reservations (I know, wrong order. It’s how the reservations worked out!) at a Thai restaurant at the fountain so we left just in time to catch the 9:30pm fountain show. I had to see it after the first one had been so good.

 

By the fountain and the bridge that led to our restaurant

 

This turned into the fountain every 30 minutes. The building on the far right is the base of the Burj Kahlifa.

The only problem with our plan was that we’d gotten really hungry after walking around so much and taking so long between meals, so we’d finished the nuts and olives that came with our drinks. We totally ruined our appetites! We still wanted to check out the restaurant, because it was supposed to be really cool and because it was right next to the fountain, so we had appetizers and got to watch two more fountain shows while we ate. It was easy to eat slowly, since I got brave and ordered my Thai ceviche appetizer spicy—it most definitely was! The metro stopped running at 11 so we took a taxi home, and made it to bed before 1am because we had a 7am wake-up for our desert dune buggying adventure the next day. The whole evening I didn’t know whether to be happier with what we were already doing or excited for what we were going to do.

Part two to come!