Hello!
Part two to come!
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.
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.
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)!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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