And MGM looks pretty happy with our first hotel brekki, doesn't he.
We're big city travellers really. Sure we like to enjoy the culture of the places we visit and get off the tourist-beaten track and we really love the big cities of the world, each with it's own special quality. The tangible history of Rome, the old meets new of London, the exciting energy of New York ...
We did both today.
Stage 1: city
Dubai is unique in our experience for its newness. Hang on history buffs, I know there's been human settlement in this area since 3000BCE, I'm talking about recent history and the impact of the discovery of oil in the 1960s. This city has been (is being) constructed on a massive scale and the adventurous and curvaceous architecture puts stamps a firm impression on the tourist experience.
The Burj al-Arab is meant to represent the sails of a ship but there's curves everywhere here just look at the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, I think the buildings here reflect the shapes of the desert.
Even our hotel room and no straight lines, it's a very different kind of architecture style and the fluidity is so pleasing to the eye
We caught the very fast, clean and efficient metro - enclosed station AC inside, heat outside very nice.
to the mall of Dubai, again huge! This is the central fountain just slightly dwarfs the Plaza fountain.
Here's some perspective - four floors high
We stepped outside briefly to get these photos of the spectacular (I'm told) fountain, we decided not to wait the 30mins till show time. MGM didn't even wait while I took these pics.
And sky line
And the hard to photograph amazingness of the Burj Khalifa - world's tallest man-made structure
But we did not stay outside in the non-Wendy-weather long and we did not take the scary (for claustrophobics) lift ride the the top - my excuse was it was way too spendy.
We traversed our way to see all this almost entirely in lovely AC controlled walk-ways which link a lot of the city buildings. I guess when your summers include temps of higher than 50°c you really want to be able to get from A to B without melting your shoes on the pavement.
Culture/adventure
At 4pm we were whisked off to the desert by the very delightful team at Arabian Adventures.
First stop an oasis (man-made) and a falconry show (yes it was hot out there).
Then we went sand dune bashing - so.much.squealy.fun will
add a video here soon
We watched the sunset
Some camel riding ...more squealing
Had dinner Beduin-style (tourist version)
We're entertained by the most amazing and at times downright alarming belly dancing - have you ever seen it? I had not and I'll admit I never knew the human body could do that!
As you might imagine that was a lot to fit into one day. We were glad to shower off the heat and sand and crawl into bed - no legs left for walking wading through the desert sand put paid to any walking - for our four hours of sleep before our next ugly o'clock flight tomorrow.
See you tomorrow lovelies - we miss you
What an amazing day!! I can't believe the contrast between the near space-age city and the Bedouin style dinner. Just wow. And you rode a camel in the desert? A-mazing.
ReplyDelete