Home > My Travels > Dubai
Dubai is a city with several faces. Traditional with some historic
or religious stuff (Abra and Dhow boats on the
Creek river, wind towers, mosques...), Animated and Colored with quarters
containing hundredth of shops (Deira...) and souqs ("Gold", "Old", "Electronic"
Souqs...) opened late in the evening , Modern and Luxurious with
new buildings, huge malls and top class hotels, Moving forward with huge
building sites with dozens
of cranes in action...
Actually Dubai is a city that grew up fastly the last years and is still growing. But the city tends to attract lot of tourists and (with the country) provides a variety of activities and things to do and to see : visits, historic stuff, beach and desert activities, shopping... However for a so ambitious city we were quite surprised to see that public transport is so absent. Only a few buses (no lines plan seemed available !) were in action but no metro or tramwas were available... Car is the master so there is a lot of Taxis but also huge traffic jam and some pollution, noise... Should be better with Metro which is under construction...
Jumeirah is a very spread quarter aside the sea in which there are some nice stuff like the Jumeirah Mosque or the famous Burj Al Arab hotel. With a 321 meters height, the Burj Al Arab, located on an artificial island and which became the symbol of Dubai, is currently the highest and the only 7 stars (!) hotel of the world...
If you want to swim you may try the Jumeirah Beach Park. Despite it is not free it is nice and have all what you need (food, bar, lockers...).
To terminate the day you could visit the faked but nicely reproduced Medinah Jumeirah. It contains numerous upmarket shops, bars and restaurants but unfortunately there is a "jet-set" ambiance that we felt quite disagreable.
Jumeira, like the rest of Dubai, is fully in expansion with dozens of high building under construction and like the yet famous palm shaped island. I've never seen so large construction areas, so many cranes and workers at the same times.
Dubai is often considered as a shopping capital city and actually I've never seen so much shops and merchandise to sell in a single city. In the huge malls, in the souqs or simply in the streets like in Deira there are hundredth of shops with tons of heteroclite stuff... However I was quite disappointed by the prices that I've found very close or even equivalent to those in occidental Europe. It is likely better during the Dubai Shopping Festival, the big annual discount period.
A trip in the desert is generally a thing to do. We just made an half day. I wanted to see some full sand dunes desert but it was not really like that. Anyway it was quite kind.
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Deira City Centre |
United Arab Emirates Official Site Government of United Arab Emirates
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Air France
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