In Dubai airport, awaiting flight to Dehli, India. Got here Thurs nite. Hotel great. Fri went on self tour via hop on/off busses. City super modern, fantastically clean, what a change from Cairo. There are artificial Islands built into the Arabian(Persian) Gulf, guess it depends on which shore you are on as to its name. One is in the shape of a huge palm tree, trunk, and about 14 fronds with a semicircle wider Islands protecting the fronds from the Gulf. Each frond had a road down the center from the trunk to the frond tip. There are private homes-villas on each side of the frond road with about a hundred foot plus private beach on the water side. Most fronds are fully developed, with one frond completely undeveloped--just a huge palm frond maybe 600-1000 feet wide, and mot quite a mile long, it's hard to tell exactly from the trunk road. The trunk road is quite a bit wider, with wide median strips, an automated elevated monorail, parallel access roads on each side of the main trunk road and huge hotels and apartments and condos along the whole palm trunk road, which is two or more miles long. At the end (Gulf side) is Atlantis, an enormous hotel-resort-shopping mall, with many amenities, para sailing, scuba diving, various boat trips... and more... The building has a he-mungous Arab doorway in the middle of it which can be seen all along the trunk roadway...very impressive. Another 'palm' a duplicate, is being built some miles west. There are three main 'downtown' areas, although only the center one is designated as downtown. The official downtown city is the center one, the other two are about eight miles to the east and west of the center city. The downtown city has about 100 skyscrapers, and the center of the downtown area is the Dubai Mall, the largest mall in the world, much bigger than Minneapolis Bloomingdales Mall. It has a series of waterfalls, with aluminum men diving down the waterfalls. There is a huge Aquarium with sharks, and hundreds if not thousands of different varieties of fish, coral, sea weeds... It is three stories high and a block long with a tunnel people can walk thru and look up at the fish swimming over your heads. There is an ice skating rink, larger that the hub roller skating rink-Marcia. The stores are grouped by type, carpet stores together, womes wear, sports.... All in different areas. The exception to the separation is various food, candy, ice cream, and similar stores mixed in all over the mall, and a huge area of restaurants, of every type and variety, but mostly upscale restaurants. There are 'souks', or traditional hallways of spice, gold, fabric... Stores all in the Arabian decor, and beautiful they are... Glittering, chandeliers, tile, ceiling decorations, wall coverings or paintings, sculptures.... All Arabia of old and glamerous. And arising from the mall is the world's tallest building, 165 stories tall, with a narrow sphere going quite a bit higher. Next to the mall and Burg Kadaif (tallest building) is a continuation of the creek, a salt water river, widened here into a lake about twice the size if the Jordan Creek Mall's lake, with a fantastic water fountain which dances to music and lights for about ten minutes every half hour from 6 to10 or 11 pm with a variety of music and dances of the waters. On the far west end of Dubai is the Marina City, a hundred skyscrapers restricted to apartments for rent, conds to buy and up scale hotels. Seems impossible but that's what the recording on the hop on.off bus said, a restricted residential area, no business offices... Winding thru these buildings is a street car system and a salt water river system with harbors, lakes, sea side restaurants and art galleries and other amusements, all very up scale. And the recording said they are almost filled up. Huge ocean going yachts, smaller big boats, excursion boats are on these waters. The three cities are connected by a monorail system, with service every ten minutes, all automated--no driver, neither was the monorail servicing the different terminals at the airport. I rode on both of these systems. At the eastern end is the original Dubai, of very old reproductions of the fishing village, the late 1800's semi-modern traditional homes and stores, and the recent (1970's) buildings and then the ultra modern sheek hotel, mall's... in the eastern city part of the single city-Dubai. This old-to,-new city is on the banks of the Dubai Creek, a DSM sized creek-river & larger sea water inlet from the Arabian Gulf. Here are real souks of gold, spices, fabrics... that smell and feel like I imagined they would be. Took a dhow (boat)ride on the creek for an hours cruise. The hop on.off ticket offered the water taxi, dhow ride, the aquarium visit, museum visits, restored shiek's house, which is now a history museum ... And some more i didn't have the time or energy to do. And Friday and Saturday I was out and about from nine am to ten PM. Also went to a mosque on Sunday which offered gentiles tours and explaination of Islamic faith. Sunday i was pooped so i got back to the hotel by eight pm, showeted and ate at the hotel restaurant. Still was ten pm by the time i turned in to sleep. Those three days i walked my ankles off, almost. Oh! I went up to the observation deck of Burg Kahalifa (spelling ?). I didn't go up to the 148 observation floor, it was 500 durhim, while my trip to the 124th floor was only 149 durhims. Bye for now, folks are lining up to board the plane.
No comments:
Post a Comment