Our first official day in
Dubai started off well.
James had arranged city and desert tours for us over the internet a few weeks before we arrived.
The company seemed a bit disorganized though, and they emailed us several times asking for us to confirm our booking and suggesting different prices each time.
They were supposed to pick us up at our hotel at 9am, so we were dressed and ready by then.
Around 9am, we received a call in our hotel room.
It was the tour group asking us what time we wanted them to pick us up.
James was a bit confused, and spoke with them to figure out what was going on.
We decided to only do the city tour and because there was a morning or afternoon option, we decided to take the later choice – which started at 2pm.
So, now we had a free morning.
We asked for a map at the front desk, and after looking at it, we decided to head down to the Dubai Creek.
Erin had a little bit of difficulty navigating at first.
She was using the compass to determine which direction we were going, but it was not correlating with things on the map.
James then pointed out the fact that the map used a different compass.
In Muslim countries, maps point towards
Mecca, rather than north.
This was interesting and very confusing!
But, between the two of us, we figured out where to go and eventually made our way to the water.
Along the creek there are several souks (markets), so we wandered through the textile section.
We also made our way through the watch district.
We stopped in a few shopping malls as we passed.
We noticed there were many American food chains (McDonalds, Subway, Pizza Hut, Baskin Robbins, and Little Caesars).
Our friends Eunice and Luis had suggested that we stop at Spinney's, a large grocery store, for some general items we needed.
We were so excited as we entered the Spinney's – it was very large and filled with familiar products.
We were able to purchase some wonderful fresh fruits and vegetables as well some old favorites (diet coke and sugar-free redbull).
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| James standing on the edge of the Dubai Creek. |
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| A mosque across from the Dubai Creek. |
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| A view of the textile souk - there were plenty of beautiful materials to look at. |
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| Lots of shoes (big and small!). |
From the grocery store, we headed back to the hotel and ate our lunch. Soon it was about 2pm, and we met up with our tour guide who was waiting in the hotel lobby for us. We didn't really know what to expect because we hadn't really seen an itinerary or anything. We only knew the cost and the time frame. We got into the tour van, and our driver took off. He didn't really say anything to us at all, so we decided to initiate conversation. We asked him if we were meeting up with other people. In very poor English, we thought he said that we would not be meeting up with any other people. We also asked where he was taking us. He again responded, but we had no idea what he said. So, we just sat back and took in the views. Eventually, we ended up at the public beach. We headed out to test the water and take in the views.
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| Erin on the Persian Gulf Coast - quite beautiful! |
Our next stop took us to Burj Al Arab. Unfortunately, we could not go into the hotel without paying an entrance fee. We did take a few pictures before moving on though.
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| Tabitha made friends with a small stuffed animal all the way from Germany while standing in front of Burj Al Arab. |
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| We thought these two buildings resembled the Chrysler Building in New York. |
We next visited the Palm, the series of man-made islands that looks like a giant palm tree from above. It was enormous - filled with high-rise apartments and numerous townhomes. Our guide indicated (we think) that the Palm was finally opened for residences only a year ago. At the very end of the palm is the the Atlantis Resort, where we stopped in for a few minutes to look around.
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| The ceiling inside the Atlantis Resort - was extremely colorful. |
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| Inside the Atlantis Resort, there is an aquarium where you can swim with dolphins! |
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| The outside view of the Atlantis Resort - which is located along the Palm Jumeirah islands. |
Next, we headed to the Mall of the Emirates, which is one of the largest malls in the entire world! We really wanted to go because we wanted to see the ski slopes that are inside the mall.
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| The Dubai skyline as we were driving towards the Mall of the Emirates. |
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| The ski slope inside the mall! |
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| If you look closely, you can see the chairlift taking people up the hill. |
Our final stop took us to see the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa.
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| Tabitha in front of Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. |
After our tour, we headed back to the hotel.
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| James standing in front of our tour van. |
When we returned to our hotel, it was already dark. We ate dinner together in our hotel room. We also tried to call our families using the internet, however, it was prohibited in Dubai. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), blocks certain programs that they cannot monitor directly - as they regulate Internet use to prohibit a variety of potential religious and societal violations. You may recall a few months ago, the UAE tried to ban the use of Blackberrys for this very reason. While we were happy we had internet, we were disappointed we couldn't contact our families.
Our hotel had a gym - the only hotel with a gym in our entire trip. Needless to say, Erin was incredibly excited. She left James in the lobby where he could use the internet and headed down to the gym. After Erin's workout, we headed back down to our room, where Erin did a load of laundry in the washing machine in our room, while James watched a movie on TV. In Dubai, there were many American tv channels, so it was fun to watch a movie – even though it was a movie we probably wouldn't have chosen on our own (Training Day). Soon, the laundry was done, so we used our clothes lines and hung up all of the clothing in hopes that it would dry overnight. By this time, it was after midnight, so we headed to bed.
