Wednesday, March 27, 2013

A day in Dubai

Interesting facts about Dubai: Tallest Man-Made Structure. Tallest Hotel. Biggest Mall. World’s biggest Aquarium. Second largest man-made Marina. It has even broken the record for being the city with the largest number of people named Mohammed.

We met Z and D for breakfast at 9:00. Early risers, they'd been up since 5 and in the gym for an hour, showered and breakfasted. We arranged to meet again at 11:00 and take the Hop-on-Hop-off bus around the city to see the biggest, tallest stuff. Traffic is terrible in Dubai and we slogged along from place to place. The route passed whiz bang shopping center after whiz bang shopping center. We stopped at the Mall of the Emirates where we watched men and boys have a great time on the artificial ski slopes and sled runs, play around on snow shoes and roll down snowy slopes in giant transparent plastic balls. The walls are painted with Currier and Ives type wintery scenes. The Arabs wear ski jackets over their kandora robes. Unreal.



Last stop was Downtown Dubai and the Dubai Mall. We ate dinner at a water-side restaurant where Debra began with a hubbly-bubbly pipe and merrily puffed on the thing for a while. The food was good; the view and setting spectacular. Sitting in the shadow of the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa, we lingered long enough over dinner to see the fountain show in action. As we were late for the last bus, we had to trot through the center, past all the sculpture and the amazing aquarium in order to catch our ride. And past the fabulous shops on Fashion Avenue where each window looked like a little work of art. Although shopping centers are hardly on our radar screens, we were all awe-struck by the splendor of the place. Then we sat in the traffic yet again.

One more item of business before we finished the day; a trip over to a nearby local store to buy a suitcase. The large general merchandise shop was marketing to the working population in Dubai: Philippinos and Indians. We found a decently priced roller-bag to tide Richard over and wheeled it back along the sidewalk to the hotel.


1 comment:

  1. I'm still reading backwards started at "Melba on his chest". Still trying to figure out who Zuzu and Debra are. Why didn't I just start at the beginning? It is kind of fun to have this mystery, though. I don't think I'd like Dubai but I'm sure it's a "must see" place.
    Barbara

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