You might be an engineer if...

... you take pictures of pulley mechanisms that are involved in the steering of the water taxis (abras) while you are on vacation....

I thought it was cool - I am an engineer...

Faster than a speeding camel, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s a Dubai City Taxi…

Our taxi that took us from Dubai to Abu Dhabi was NUTS! He picked us up at the hotel near the Dubai Museum, then drove down to the Orient Guest House to grab our bags, then off to the races – well, one more pit stop, apparently the taxi was out of gas… so, we had to swing into a gas station. I wanted to go to a gas station, and see how much gas costs in Dubai… And I got left with a new question – what in the world is an Imperial Gallon – hmmm… anyway, gas stations are all pretty similar, all around the world.

Then the taxi whisked us off to Abu Dhabi – at lightning speed, or at least after we got past all the traffic circles on the highway – the official taxi meter kept informing the driver to slow down, but he paid no heed and rushed us on off to the airport – we made it with 2 hours to shop! =)

How much did I pay for that Latte?

After lunch, we went downstairs to the Starbucks Café and had a Latte and strawberry cake. The menu was in diram – and it was 18 diram – which converts to about 6 dollars – good grief! Lol It was a very good latte – after the coffee we had the bell men in front of the Arabian Courtyard hail a taxi to take us to Abu Dhabi Airport… Snapping pictures out the window of the cab, we departed Dubai and headed off to Oman.

Foreigners are thinner because it is such a challenge to find food overseas….

After the Dubai Museum we went back to the hotel area – Bastakia, to eat at one of the recommended restaurants for Arabic delights – this was our third attempt to go to this restaurant – the first day we were in Dubai, we got there too late for lunch, too early for dinner, the next day we were too tired after going to the Mall of the Emirates and got back to the room and went to sleep, and then this last day in Dubai the place was booked for a private event at lunch… alas, back to the Arabian Courtyard (hotel affiliated with the Orient Guest House) to grab lunch at one of the four restaurants there…

From The Dubai “Aquarium” – recommended way to keep fish…

In the early days before oil was discovered, pearls were the primary source of income for the Dubai merchants. The underwater exhibit described the boats and methods used to collect the pearls. I’ve never seen such a room, but it was very cool, to help give the appearance of being under water, there were fans with screens on them, to give the suns mottled appearance at the water’s surface, This was the last room in the Dubai Museum – and then you exit back on to the street where there is a large boat with human powered propulsion….

Home - at last...

Well, we made it home - it was a good flight - no kids - well, except the one toddler that screamed for the last 45 minutes of the flight... It was like when Cesar Millan (Dog Whisperer) says, you have to catch the dog's behavior before they hit the red zone - well, the kid wound up slowly - and once they were in full red zone hysterics, all the flight attendants showed up to help - anyway - most of the flight was great! It is great to be back home.

We're gonna try and get all the posts that have been written loaded this evening... Then Stephen and I will work to fill in the other gaps over the next week or so. =)

I leave for WPB tomorrow morning - yay work!

Ah, yes – the wood…..

The first area in the air-conditioned area of the Dubai Museum had a sign that indicated the where the wood had come from … Mystery solved!

Are those real people?

The book mentioned the mannequins in the Dubai Museum, but it was still surprising how life-like the exhibits were… You enter the fort into a large open air courtyard with rooms off to the side – one side with weapons and such and more huge wooden doors – one of them had spikes, the sort that you wouldn’t want that door slammed shut into you. The other side had more cultural items – drums and musical instruments – like a skirt covered with goat hooves that rattle when you move (looked more like a dog toy than an instrument to me, but I’m sure it makes interesting music).

The courtyard exited into a spiral ramp to the air conditioned area (WooHoo – cold air). Down the ramp you entered a room with a large screen with a video of the history of Dubai – starting with men on camels and pearl divers and moving to oil discovery with non-Arab oil drillers, and then on to the huge building projects going on today. It was in this room that I learned where all the wood came from… Through the next door there were more dark and narrow alleys with mannequins in the rooms describing the different activities of the past and present. This is where the life-like mannequins were – they were all over the place, just in the middle of the walk way or sitting on edge of the path looking like real people. Stephen wrote before me and he captured the underwater room pretty well.

Last Day in Dubai...

Well, the last day in Dubai was pretty full, all things considered… We got our last breakfast of chicken sausage, baked beans and pastries – orange juice with a lil mango added in our open air hotel lobby. We went back to the room to cool off one more time before packing up, leaving our bags with the hotel receptionist, and then heading out for the day. I was a little concerned to just leave the bags locked in a closet, but the bastakia area seemed very safe and the hotel was off the beaten path. First things first, we needed to get to the Dubai Museum – it was the #1 thing to see in Dubai according to the Dubai tourist book…

Last Post for today....

The hotel internet is not free - it costs 2RO per hour (2/.4 = $5.00) so, I try and upload as much as I can in an hour... I will leave you with this - it was an advertisement in a pajama shop in the old souk area in Dubai... I don't understand what I should think about this advertisement - but mostly I was just disturbed...

Where are all the taxi’s?

Like I said, the wait for a taxi at the Mall of the Emirates was an HOUR… but that allowed us to watch all the cool cars – like the orange and black Audi R8, and the many Land Rovers, there was a BMW X6 cross-over SUV – then in the back – of the taxi waiting line, you got to walk past the premium valet parking… where there was a Rolls Royce, a Lambourghini, Ferrari, corvette and Audi R8… Maybe that made the hour wait worth it – nah, I don’t think so…

Bahri Bar and Burj Al Arab – Wow that’s some Mojito….

Well, after the souks, we had decided to forego the Dubai Museum until tomorrow, so I had wanted to get to the Bahri Bar tonight to find the view of the Burj Al Arab our travel guide had described as “awesome”. Up until then we decided to get a taxi and go to the Mall of the Emirates. Dubai’s reputation as being the “shopping capital of the world” is well deserved, not just from the souks but also the malls. This one in particular was huge! Of special note is that on the bus ride into Dubai, I had noticed a stunted building that angled up into the air and just stopped, as if it was an incomplete freeway onramp. This was actually the indoor ski area of the Mall of the Emirates. The pictures from the various window spots of the mall show what I’m talking about. We had lunch at Apres Ski situated at the base of the indoor ski area, I had risotto with prawns, Eliz had a spicy chicken wrap, and we both shared fondue. Not exactly “roughing it” in terms of food though… Multitudes of shops, some high end ones we had never seen before, others familiar such as H&M, Tiffany’s, and Nike. It seemed to go on forever; we’d come to a common intersection, pick a direction, then come to another completely new intersections with new directions, stores and such. The mall’s view from outside hides the mall’s sheer size quite well. Perhaps the highlight of the mall (in my opinion) were the cars in valet while we were waiting for a taxi. Nice…

We took a cab to the Burj al Arab and after some walking we finally found where the Bahri Bar was. It was located inside an adjacent mall. We got a couple seats outside on the patio and saw a breathtaking view of the Burj al Arab. I had a mojito, she had a grown-up Hawaiian punch. See the pictures. That was our night, we took another taxi back to the room and went to bed.

The adventures of Jewelry Girl and Barter Boy.

I thought the shopping experience would be awesome, such that I could possibly get a Rolex or something for a few hundred dollars. Ooh, there’s a store selling some Tag Heuer watches. Hmmm… 5920 dinhars translates to… More than $1000. Wait, I can’t afford that! Alas, guess I’ll be reserved to window shopping for now. I had read that these souks are the place if you like to barter. In fact bartering and haggling were expected in any sale, and when Elizabeth found a jewelry store with a nice “ametrine” necklace (half amethyst, half citrine), I couldn’t help but think about this. The shops all looked like this, about a 7-foot by 15-foot rectangular room with necklaces, rings, earrings enclosed in glass cases on every wall. I always had the thought in the back of my mind that perhaps what these guys are selling isn’t the real thing, how were we to tell? Initially we had wanted to get this necklace for our friend Lisa. Maybe a $100 or a little more, a nice little Christmas gift. Total price for the necklace, over $1000. Gah! Sorry Lisa, you’re a good friend, but not that good, lol! So we decided to keep looking, and Elizabeth made the decision that for something that expensive, it ought to be hers. Eventually she set her eyes on a nice ruby necklace with gold chain. A funny thing I thought that happened is that Elizabeth had asked to see a matching pair of ruby earrings if he had any. Evidently there were none in the store, so he had another store employee (told him in Arabic) to go find one. He totally left the store and went to what I can only assume to be another jewelry store. Were these stores connected? Perhaps another store owned by a family member? Maybe the stores have trade/sale agreements together? I didn’t know. Similarly, another man came into their store, rummaged through his front window display and took a particular ring, and made a waving gesture to the man helping us that he was taking that ring. Then our man pulled out a hand-written ledger and must have made note of what was taken. Very odd. Anyways, Elizabeth seemed to have her mind set on the ruby necklace and earrings, and the man started punching numbers into a calculator. What happened next was, and I expect will be, a recurring theme in any of the souks/shop dealers we happen upon. “Your price is (around) 960 dollars, but for you special…” He punched in a percentage and said “850.” Another recurring theme, all the shop peddlers thought she was special and didn’t really acknowledge me. Oh well… Oh that’s nice, pessimistic me is thinking, how do I know you didn’t just start at the higher price and worked your magic to get back to the original price, or was that even the original price. I’m not the best at bartering, in fact I know nothing about it or how to do it correctly. First off, I thought perhaps the thing to do is just hold out and feign the “it’s too expensive” card and see what happens. Magically, the price started to fall. I thought about if there are particular techniques used to barter/haggle, such as fawning over other less expensive pieces to try and have the store employee try to redirect us to the original piece at a lower price, but in general I leave Elizabeth to her own devices. Don’t get me wrong I try and look out for her as best I can, but she’s a grownup and knows just as well as I do. In the end, she received the necklace and earrings for 2800 dirhams, about $775. He shook both our hands, and deftly reached under the counter to pull out some drinks to celebrate the purchase. It was the most expensive can of orange juice I had ever drunk. He was quick to close up shop and shuffle us along since it was noon and all shops had to be closed, I believe for noon prayer. That probably also helped us move the sale along also.

Stephen’s turn for Friday summary.

Friday morning had us get up and get breakfast first thing. We enjoyed a nice breakfast in the courtyard right outside our room. Pastries, chicken sausage, mango and orange juice, yogurt, under the shade and a cloudless blue sky. Today’s agenda seemed not too hectic. We thought about the museum, then going to find the Bahri Bar and enjoying the view of the Burj Al Arab hotel. However that plan changed a little. We decided to find the local souks, come back for a refreshing drink at the hotel, then head to the mall and then the Bahri Bar. Of course, first thing’s first: You can’t do anything without any money. We walked about a ¼ mile down the road to exchange some money. Unfortunately you can’t exchange traveler’s checks without a passport, which we left in the room safe, and instead just converted some regular dollars. We tried to make our way to the waterfront where we would catch a water taxi called an abras and for 1 dinhar (about $0.27) we could get to the other side of the Dubai Creek and visit the souks. Walking along the waterfront we could feel the sun and heat coming, it was getting hot. We took a turn and walked down the Dubai souk, mostly textiles and tourist trinkets being sold here. Hustle and bustle of quite a few people, although since it was Friday (essentially Sunday), not all the shops were open. Something I saw that I didn’t quite understand: men holding hands. WTF!?! Evidently, Elizabeth had read in the travel guide that really good male friends can hold hands together to express their friendship. Sort of extreme in my opinion, but whatever.

There were 2 stops on our side of the waterfront that transported people to 2 spots on the opposite side. We got on, paid our due, and took the 5 minute ride over. Taxis were everywhere, many boats were strung up on the sides. When we got off, we started walking toward the direction we thought the souks were. We found quite a number of other foreign tourists walking around the area as well, and soon the pungent aroma of the spice souk found us. There were a few store fronts open, probably to accommodate the tourists that frequent the area. Many of the other shops were closed. Bags and bowls of spices, dried leaves and mushrooms, and peddlers outside every open shop speaking broken english wanting you to come in and visit their shop. What’s a tourist gonna do with a bag of spices? It was hard enough for me to identify what they were selling anyways.

The peddlers were out in force in the gold souk, numerous alleyways and store fronts devoted to selling jewelry of all kinds. I think they particularly singled out Elizabeth cause of her brightly colored shirt and whiteness of her skin. For as much as my looks don’t fit into the area, Elizabeth was even more so. Some of the peddlers were scary, they’d follow us after we’d passed their shop still asking us to come browse their wares. I was constantly putting my hand on the camera bag I had strapped around my shoulder to make sure it was still secure.

Snow in Dubai...

After our mid day break, we caught a cab to the Mall of the Emirates. What a crazy place that is – it is enormous! We ate lunch at the St. Moritz Café – at the end of Ski Dubai and watched people catch the lift and children get pulled along on sleds. We went to the Ski Pro shop, but didn’t find anything we wanted to bring back with us… we wandered around the mall for a couple of hours, I was surprised by the Marble Slab – but didn’t get any ice cream, we wanted to watch the sunset from the bar that overlooks the big sailboat hotel… so we headed to the taxi stand…. OMG! There is a story and a half in the wait for the taxi, but long line story short – we met a nice girl who had come over on a cargo plane with Shiek somethingorother’s 32 yearlings that he had purchased in Kentucky and she was going back to the states today… I’ll leave the cool cars to Stephen to describe…. It took an hour to get a cab, so we watched the sunset in line, but then we got to the parkign area for the hotel – headed off in the wrong direction (again) to find the bar… but I think that was just so we could give the people at the bar for sunset time to leave… Once we got headed in the right direction, we located the bar and had excellent seats to watch the colorful lights illuminate the sail of the sailboat hotel. Stephen enjoyed a mojito, and I had a non-alcoholic passionfruit, cranberry, raspberry drink – sort of an adult hawaiian punch… a little tart, but tasty still. We caught a cab ride back to the bastakhia area and came back to the hotel room and fell asleep – again, early, but I think we are almost adjusted…

We got up at 7:30 this morning, and it didn’t feel like it was 11:30 at night. So, off we go – gotta check-out of the hotel, find a place to store our suitcases while we visit the Dubai Museum and then catch a cab back to Abu Dhabi.

Friday=Holy Day in Dubai…..

So our one whole day in Dubai is Friday, which is like Sunday in the US – but that’s ok… just means most stuff doesn’t open til the afternoon AND the only people that are about are tourists – so the city is a little more quiet than during the week… I’ll leave the jewelry girl and barter boy for Stephen to tell – but the requirements of the noon day prayer was surprising. The store had to close or the vendor was going to be fined 10,000 Dirhma. Anyway, we were up at’em early (like Stephen said in the last blog) but it was not an entirely smooth getting going – we went off to convert American dollars into Dubai dirhma, and thankfully the place was open early on Friday (not late though… we tried to go back later and they were no longer open). Then we were trying to get to the souks (open air markets), and we walked in the general direction that we thought we wanted to go, but we ran into a Hindu temple – which was not where we were trying to get to, so we completed a loop around the mosque that was the primary structure in the neighborhood and back tracked toward the hotel room… At this point I realized that I had not put on sun screen and the sun was HOT! So we stopped by the room so that I could keep from becoming a lobster just walking around the streets!

So, thankfully, protected from the sun, we set out toward the water taxies again (abra)… Seems like walking to the water front shouldn’t be that challenging, but all the very small alleyways – and dead ends and sudden turns, it is surprising how hard it is to get where you want to go… We found the creek and the walked along it until we came to some polymer (sand filled) jersey barriers with 8 food plywood barricade along the creekwalk with a 1 person pass through area. I was a little hesitant to believe that the gap in the plywood was an invitation to pass, but apparently it was just a way to keep motor vehicles from the walk… It passed in front of the very large mosque – which had several grass lawn areas. I can’t imagine how much trouble it is to get grass to grow here… There are many flower beds with tropical foliage, or petunias, aloe – and irrigation tubes, the only flower bed that had foliage growing over the irrigation tubing was full of MINT – it is a weed even in the middle east… Back to the creek walk – we found a souk on the side of the creek that we are on, but it was mostly closed, so we got on the abra and went across the street to the diera area of Dubai – where the Gold Souk and Spice Souk are located… The Spice souk had shops on both sides of a narrow alley with bags full of spices, flowers, nuts. The alley was barely 5 feet wide and there were spices in the alley spilling out of the shops along with the vendors… It was rather crazy, so we continued on to attempt to find the Gold Souk. There was a large sign that said – “Dubai, The Gold City”, but it was on the other side of the street, so we wandered around the spice souk a bit longer… Then after we had circled all the way around the spice souk and arrived back at where we started – we revisited the map and discovered we had gone the wrong direction… and that sign, “Dubai, The Gold City” was the entrance to the gold souk…. The gold Souk was huge – about 20 feet wide 100 yards long, with benches and men selling water in the middle and jewelry stores down both sides. There are side alleys which have some jewelry stores and also copy watches and copy hand bags – the workers of those stores stand in the middle area and work to get tourists to visit their shops with promises of these copies of Louis Vutton bags or whatever – they kept trying to get my attention and I would look to Stephen to tell them, “No, thank you” We did visit one jewelry store – and like I said, I’ll leave that story for Stephen…. As noon arrived and it was time for mid-day prayers, we made our way back across the creek on the abra and went back to the hotel (that serves Starbucks in the afternoon) for an iced coffee.