Dubai

Me at the top of Burj Khalifa

My parents are probably the only people that can confirm this for sure, but I’ve wanted to go to Dubai FOREVER. Or like 8 years. Same thing. One year we even had tickets to go. Then we canceled. And I was ridiculously upset. Anyway, I finally managed to fulfill my lifelong (kind of) dream of seeing Dubai. And it was cool. We were only there for a weekend but we managed to cram in quite a bit of stuff. Here’s some of the highlights, a bit scattered around and a little long but I wanted to get it up before I forgot anything else!

We arrived early evening on Thursday, having left as early as we could after class. We checked in to the three bedroom apartment we rented for the weekend. Looking out from the 10^th floor it reminded me a little bit of Las Vegas with all the lights everywhere, but with much taller buildings.  That night we had an un-remarkable dinner and then went out dancing until late. The next morning, we got up at the reasonable time of 11 am. We then walked to McDonalds for breakfast. Ya I know, but after living in the middle of nowhere for the past two months it was cool to be able to walk anywhere except to more desert.

Gold at a shop in the Dubai gold souk

That afternoon we went to the gold souks, basically an entire outdoor mall of gold sellers. I’ve never seen that much gold in one place before. If you’ve never heard about the gold souks of Dubai, they are world famous for buying jewelry by the weight of the gold.  I bought a ring, and basically the shopkeeper looked at the weight of the ring, multiplied it by the current price of gold and added in the price of the crystals. Then we bartered a little bit and eventually I paid for it on a credit card. A strange merger of normal jewelry stores and the market which we were in, but it was fun to see.

That night we debated about where to eat dinner for a while, before finally going to a pub at our favorite hotel chain.  It was the first restaurant I’d seen with pork on the menu! I ended up eating mac and cheese, craving the comfort food after months of eating in restaurants. After that we took a taxi to Burj Khalifa, at the Dubai Mall.

Burj Khalifa

Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world at 828 m (2,716.5 ft).  You have to book tickets in advance to get an entrance time. Then you take a ridiculously long elevator ride to the 124^th story of the building. Here there’s an observation deck where you can take in the city. We ended up with a 10:30 pm entrance time the second night we were there, which turned out to be a great time to go. We could see all of Dubai lit up for miles around us. It was truly an amazing feat of engineering. We messed around up there and took some pictures that turned out horribly before heading out for a night of dancing and debauchery at, naturally, the Hard Rock Café.

Snow World at the Mall of the Emirates

The next day had been designated as a shopping day for everyone. We all needed clothes for our formal final presentation two weeks away. And of course Dubai and shopping are pretty much synonymous. The Mall of the Emirates is/was at some point the second largest mall in UAE.  Which is still pretty crazy big. The mall is most widely known for having an indoor ski slope. Complete with sledding, a T-bar and chairlift, ski and snowboard lessons it was pretty cool looking. I didn’t actually ski, because frankly I didn’t see the point when I knew so much better about what real snow could provide. But I did watch. And enjoyed watching kids playing in the snow much the same way we always did growing up. Still, I couldn’t help but worry about an entire generation of children who might grow up thinking that’s what winter is about; fake icy snow in a temperature controlled box.

Dubai's most iconic building

Dubai has no aversions to westernization that we’d seen in Abu Dhabi.  Everything seemed to be a show of wealth. I’ve never seen so many BMWs, Benz’s, Maserati’s, Aston Martin’s, Ferrari’s, and pretty much any other luxury brand you can think of. Going dancing that night we mingled mostly with expats spending upwards of $20 a drink and dancing to American music, girls wearing dresses that don’t even pretend to keep a tone of modesty. We could have been anywhere in the world. To go to this from Abu Dhabi, where these things are a little more subtle and hidden away, was a bit strange. It was also a little bit of a relief, not worrying about if I was the least clothed girl around (something I’ve never in my life been concerned with before the UAE.) It was nice to go to the pool and not think “I am the only girl here wearing a bikini”.  It also felt a little out of place in the conservative and traditional society we were supposed to be in. I look forward to going back one day and experiencing more of what Dubai has to offer as I know we only scratched the surface of such a vast and varied city. It is definitely a crossroad where worlds meet.

PS. Once again photos are mostly courtesy of others. This time I believe: Haniff, Marie, and Sergio