around the world: Dubai

While Dubai was definitely not on my personal travel bucket list, it’s undeniable that it’s a fascinating place. I went into this work trip feeling like it was going to be kind of an artificial feeling place. And I left feeling like I was right about that - so much concrete and glass and ostentatiously "biggest" everything plunked down in the desert. Fascinating, maybe, but not my kind of scene.

Sooo, out of all the places I’ve been in the world, I would probably recommend a lot of other places to vacation before this one. Especially in July. Going in July is a terrible idea – 110+ degrees, and always a super hazy sky. That made it a lot less fun to leave the hotel, and much harder to see the view from it! But I did see/do a few things that are worth sharing:

Burj Khalifa: Last fall when we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower and I was plastering myself to the wall on the lookout platform, I thought probably I will not have so much interest in going wayyyyyy higher in the tallest building in the world. Plus, it’s pretty pricey to go to the highest level ($100-$120 kind of pricey), but since my boss ended up paying for it, I went for it. And it was pretty cool. The elevator gets you up there in only 77 seconds, and the view is impressive (though rather hazy this time of year).

The Dubai Mall: And then of course, the biggest mall in the world. Interesting to walk through once, just to realize how big it is – it has nearly every store you could ever think of, plus every food court thing you could think of, plus every luxury brand you could think of. And then also a huge aquarium, a full-size skating rink, an enormous fountain. But then again, this is pretty much all stuff you could get elsewhere, so the shopping didn’t entice me all that much. Got a lot of steps in that day though. And a kind of interesting cultural look at families shopping there.

Souks: One of our favorite parts of the tour we took on the last day was the little water taxi we took across the Dubai Creek to the souks (markets). The spice souk was really interesting, to learn about all of the imported spices from Iran, from frankincense and myrrh to saffron. The gold souk might have been more fun to look around at all of the wares on display if we weren’t constantly accosted by men trying to sell us gold or handbags or watches. Combined with the dripping sweat, we were over that scene pretty quickly.

Desert safari: This was highest on my list of what I wanted to do if I got some free time – figuring that for a once-in-a-lifetime visit to this region, I definitely wanted to experience the desert. This tour took us out in Land Rovers to the next Emirate over (Sharjah), where we drove around on the reddish sand. It was crazy! I felt rather woozy (I get carsick), but it was still really cool to see. We hopped out of the vehicle once or twice and got to experience the 42 degrees Celsius in the flesh too. Then we drove back into Dubai, where the sand is must softer/more yellowish white and had a BBQ dinner at a “Bedoin camp.” This part I could have done without entirely – except for the little camel ride, which was wild, to sit on a camel that is going from legs folded up laying down to standing! The rest of it gave me a super hokey touristy ugh feeling.

Old Dubai: While of course there is ancient history in Dubai, any actual non-nomadic settlements there only date back 200 years, and the vast majority of the buildings are only 20-30 years old. So there’s honestly not a whole lot to see in terms of historical sites. We walked through the courtyards of the historic buildings for a few minutes, and also wandered through the coffee museum (small, but a cool stop) and the Dubai Museum (meh – our tour guide had pretty much told us all the info already).

Modern Dubai: The area of our hotel was near the Burj Khalifa, but we took a tour on the last day over to the Marina/Palm Islands part. There are some pretty impressive skyscrapers, like this newest, twisty looking one, and the Atlantis Hotel on the man-made Palm Islands was impressive too. Also passed by the Burj al Arab, the only 7-star hotel in the world.

J.W. Mariott Marquis Hotel: Everything is superlative in Dubai of course, so we were in the tallest 2-tower hotel in the world, and it was a rather nice hotel – which was good, since the vast majority of the trip was spent within its walls. It’s got great views from the rooms (I was on the 53rd floor) and also from the gorgeous pool, if you can stand the heat. The Indian restaurant in it was amazing.

I had a lot of people say they were really fascinated by Dubai – what do you think? Still interested in checking it out? I would maybe say that it’s worth it as a stop-over point, to spend a day in Dubai and a day in Abu-Dhabi (which I didn’t have time for but heard is much better for visiting historical/cultural sites), but I would have trouble coming up with enough to make a whole trip out of it coming all the way from the US…