The Dubai Stopover: A Quick Visit to Dubai and Abu Dhabi
The Dubai stopover is becoming a travel essential, and I was feeling left out. But then it happened. I went to Dubai to meet my friend Kathy and the others I was going with to Africa. My stopover would be three days, a day alone while I waited, and then day tours of both Dubai and Abu Dhabi before heading to Zambia. How much could I learn about these places that had sprung from the desert in my lifetime? It turns out not a lot, but I left with a better plan for my next stopover, if there is one.
Dubai
Dubai is a good place to gather, easy to get to. The airport is one of the world’s busiest. And that’s just the beginning of the superlatives – because everything in Dubai and Abu Dhabi intends to be the biggest, the most expensive, the most audacious. The tallest building, the biggest shopping malls, everything super-scale. Luxurious resorts, houses and apartments. Palm-shaped artificial islands. An island map of the world under way in Dubai. Louvre and Guggenheim outposts still trying to get a foothold in Abu Dhabi. Dubai has also become a medical care destination – US travelers will recognize many clinic names. Abu Dhabi has determined to be green, as in foliage, and has large, irrigated green spaces with shady trees. It doesn’t stop. My hope was that I could glimpse another dimension, too.
I arrived at midnight, delivered by a pink (women only) taxi to the JW Marriott hotel. It’s the world’s tallest hotel. Had to be. It’s in Dubai. I tried out the Arabic greetings I’d learned in Jordan on people who didn’t speak Arabic. They didn’t need to. All the hotel associates I met were from somewhere else, like most of Dubai’s workforce. Natasha from Italy welcomed me, Yves and Rutendo from Cameroon and Zimbabwe were cheery at breakfast. At every turn, a different nationality. English was lingua franca.
Burj Al Arab
My plan to discover Dubai’s other dimension got off to a slow start the next morning. Deciding what to eat for breakfast in the seven-cuisine buffet took time. Drinking good coffee couldn’t be rushed. Later, I had a protracted high tea in one of the hotel’s restaurants. When I did venture out, I got into a taxi at the door and was delivered back to the doorstep without knowing what direction I’d been. In Dubai, you can’t simply walk around and enjoy a city. So being at the hotel was something to do.
Dubai Mall and Aquarium
And when I finally stepped out, it was to a mall, exactly where I intended not to go. It wasn’t enough that hotel staff recommended this as recreation; I’d forgotten my lens hood. It was fate. A Dubai shopping mall. I thought that going to a mall was a form of defeat but it turned out well enough. First things first. It took a while to orient myself in this place with its 1,200 stores and almost 6 million square feet of interior space. Lessons from scouting came in handy. Where was north? Where was the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building? At last, using mall maps and dead reckoning, I found a photo store, but it was only after being sent elsewhere twice that I found the right size lens hood. And it never did work quite right.
Burj Khalifa
Mission accomplished and now invested in the mall trip, why leave? It was cool inside the mall and I was short on ideas for other things to do. The Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo is conveniently within the mall, so I bought one of the ticket options without studying what it included. There are 300 species in the aquarium and even so the best part of the visit was that it turned out my ticket included 15 minutes behind the scenes where a guide talked about the science supporting the exhibits. You should buy that ticket, too. As you enter the aquarium, a man shoots the usual souvenir pictures in front of a green screen. I bought one of them when I left, of me standing in the wraparound aquarium “tunnel” surrounded by sharks. I think it’s rather cute – I had on lipstick and looked rested. That was to change.
Dubai’s Oldest Building
After the aquarium, I talked to the concessionaire but didn’t buy a ticket to the top of the Burj Khalifa – world’s tallest building, world’s highest office floor, fastest elevator, most windows, etc., etc. I walked outside, crossed the artificial lagoon and admired the tower. Back inside the mall, I was lured by a familiar sound – and yes, it was a Zamboni resurfacing the mall’s ice rink. I was tempted but didn’t skate. Instead, I wandered around people-watching. This is where to see real Emiratis, a man had told me. Shopping. Strolling. I observed carefully. Finally, a Lebanese lunch at the mall’s huge food court and then back to the hotel. As I waited there for the others, I had high tea and mused about Day 1 over cakes and sparkling wine. I concluded that there are many amusements at hotels and you actually can go to shopping malls for recreation. I didn’t learn much about life in Dubai, though.
Dubai Museum
Old Dubai and the Souks
What was here before the cities started gobbling up the desert? (Goodbye, wonder gecko.) The place to go for this is the Dubai Museum in the Al Fahidi historic district where low-rise restored buildings with their wind towers line streets leading to the museum, housed in a 1787 fort, the oldest building in Dubai. There’s also a great camel burger at a restaurant along the street, but now I was on a day tour and didn’t have a chance to try it. There are models of local boats outside the museum, and inside, dioramas in the dark, small galleries depict Dubai’s past as a fishing and pearling village. There’s revealing archaeological and geological information. I wish I’d brought my little flashlight. This was something I wanted to know about; only I couldn’t assimilate it all in the limited time allotted. But then I was satisfied to know for sure there was a past, and a long one.
Five new and delicious flavors
The souks might also have introduced another Dubai, but both the spice and gold souks were a little disappointing, although I wouldn’t skip them. The spice souk was partly sand bottles, garish sheeshas, cheap souvenirs and annoying hawkers who wanted to wrap me in scarves. But some shops offered foodstuffs, household goods and other items useful to locals, and it’s where I found the five new flavors of camel milk, which I could have bought but didn’t. Wimp. The gold souk was the more disappointing, maybe because the phrase “gold souk” conjures up a glittery image from Arabian Nights. Along with the hawkers there was plenty of gold jewelry in what I thought were outdated designs but that evidently still appeal to someone. I liked the jumble of trucks, crates, people and trading companies outside the souks. They suggested a normal if chaotic city, and taking a water taxi on the Dubai creek as competing Imams called to prayer gave me a passing sense of another way of life. But in the end, I gleaned only the slightest feeling of what life is and was like away from the shining towers.
Expat life. If you have a connection to someone in Dubai, try to get together with them while you’re stopping. Enjoy renewing your acquaintance and learn more about Dubai, too. I was lucky to join my friend Kathy for a night out with Ecaterina, former business student of one of Kathy’s close friends, and now concierge manager at the newest Jumeriah resorts property. We met in the pretty lobby of the Jumeirah Al Naseem and went via water taxi to dinner at a Thai restaurant on one of the resort canals, a pleasant Venice-inspired setting. From the restaurant we took an electric cart to the Burj Al Arab hotel with its dhow-reminiscent shape and soaring atrium, where we had drinks at the Gold On 27 restaurant. So much gold leaf, everything designed to glow. Our table overlooked the city lights, world’s tallest building hidden by haze, we ourselves surrounded by shimmering curtains of translucent fibers decorated with gold. Superb. But best of all was visiting with Ecaterina, hearing about her life in Dubai and listening as she and Kathy caught up. A day tour won’t do this for you. It was a glimpse into a life as I know it, more exotic, but with familiar daily rhythms of work and recreation existing there in Dubai somewhere.
Abu Dhabi
Can it be? Abu Dhabi is more opulent than Dubai. Abu Dhabi’s oil wealth shows, even if the vagaries of oil prices have some projects moving in slow motion. Here are a couple of Abu Dhabi sights.
Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. The visit I recommend most in Abu Dhabi. Huge – the mosque holds 10,000 worshipers inside and 30,000 in outside areas. Its 82 domes and marble-clad walls are brilliant white in the Gulf sun, all reflected in tiled pools. Inside is contrastingly colorful, with painted Islamic designs, the great chandeliers, and a green carpet with an herbal motif that’s the largest hand-knotted carpet in the world. Of course. The largest chandelier weighs 12 tons. Each is gilded with 24 carat gold and decorated with thousands of colorful Swarovski crystals. Close your eyes and imagine.
You must comply with the dress code to visit. I had only one garment with long sleeves, an opaque, multi-functional exercise cum PJ shirt. I wore it. It looked fine. One woman didn’t wear long sleeves and our guide encased her in a white robe with a Delft-like blue design and tight neck. She complained, but later joked that she looked like a tablecloth. She did. Another woman had to rent an abaya because someone in security objected to her shirt, which looked good to us. So be aware.
In the courtyard
Emirates Palace Hotel
We had high tea at Emirates Palace. Like everything else in Abu Dhabi, the hotel has superlatives. Enormous. Glittering. I won’t try to list more. The tea lounge was big, pretty and relaxing; the floral displays inventive; the music live. And gold flakes were scattered on the signature cappuccino I ordered. Maybe others drink gold flakes often but it was a first for me.
Trip date: May 2017
