The kids had a week off from school in mid February. We had planned a cultural trip to Cairo, Egypt to see the pyramids and the Egyptian Museum, but unfortunately a little revolution got in the way. So we changed our plans and visited Dubai instead for 4 days.
Dubai is one of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula.
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Picture from the airplane's television - we had to fly
over Baghdad to get to Dubai! |
Although Dubai's economy was built on the oil industry, today it drives its economy mainly from tourism, real estate, and financial services. Oil and natural gas revenues only account for 6% of Dubai’s GDP. Everything in Dubai looks like it was built yesterday (and that’s almost true) and all the buildings are really "over the top".
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| Dubai City |
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| Our massive hotel, Atlantis, ahead |
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| Atlantis sits at the very top of the man-made "island" called The Palm |
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| View of The Palm and the city skyline from our hotel |
The diversity of people we saw in Dubai was incredible. The few Americans we ran into were mainly other expat families from London that we know from school. Only about 17% of the 1.8 million population is made up of UAE nationals. The remainder come mainly from India, Pakistan, Bangledesh and the Philippines.
Although Arabic is the official language, English is very widely spoken by residents. We had no trouble at all communicating with people. The official state religion is Islam, but many other religions practice freely. The Islamic dress code is not required. Most local males wear a kandura, an ankle-length white shirt woven from wool or cotton, and most local women wear an abaya, a black over-garment covering most parts of the body. However, most often you see Western-style clothing because of the large expat population. We left with the strong impression that their society is quite progressive in comparison to other Muslim countries.
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A local man wearing a kandura and a backwards baseball cap,
ordering ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery |
Dubai is the 8th most visited city in the world. It has been called the "shopping capital of the Middle East" with more than 70 shopping malls, including the world's largest shopping mall, Dubai Mall.
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| The Dubai Mall is a big as 50 football fields |
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| Do you think these men shop at the Forever 21? |
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| ATMs in the mall dispense gold bullion |
Probably the most impressive part of Dubai was its rich collection of buildings and structures of various architectural styles. The innovation was astounding. It boasts the world’s tallest skyline with the crowning achievement Burj Khalifa (Khalifa Tower) - by far the world's tallest building at 2,716 feet (over 1/2 a mile!) completed in 2010.
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| Burj Khalifa |
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View from the observation deck
- you feel like you are looking down from an airplane |
Our hotel, Atlantis Dubai, was also very impressive, both in size and amenities. We had a terrific vacation enjoying the waterslides, aquariums, restaurants and the nightclub (for Mommy and Daddy only). We enjoyed spending time with another London family that lives in Walton that have become our good friends.
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| The aquariums at Atlantis |
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| Noah feeds a cow-nosed ray |
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| Noah and Zoe loved watching the fish every day |
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| Noah on the waterslide with his schoolmate |
Dubai lies directly within the Arabian Desert. The sand in the south consists mostly of crushed shell and coral and is fine, clean and white. In the Eastern part of Dubai, the dunes grow larger and are tinged red with iron oxide. We went on a Desert Safari in the Eastern part of the desert for some “dune bashing”, camel riding and dinner. It was terrific fun.
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| Our drivers took us over the dunes for a 30 minute roller coaster ride |
So, although it was not the trip we had originally planned, we had a wonderful time. We would definitely go back to visit again.
Linda
feeding cow-nosed rays, dune bashing and camel rides -- looks like one sweet vaca!
ReplyDeleteLove this post! Fascinating. We were just talking today about the snowboarding at one of those malls..... I'm putting a link on my blog to yours if you don't mind? Offspring #2 says hi.
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