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On our first full day in Dubai, Nathan and I explored the old part of the city, and then made our way back to modern comfort at the مول الامارات (Mall of the Emirates). I even thought I spotted my car a couple times from my hotel room!

Because I’m a Hilton gold member, we scored complimentary breakfast at the hotel. We thoroughly enjoyed the breakfast—scrambled eggs, cheeses, beef and pork sausages, bacon, croissants, hash browns, coffee, tea, orange juice, fresh fruit—glorious. We were actually able to stretch this into acting as both breakfast and lunch, which was perfect.

After gorging ourselves, we headed out. Since the area we were trying to explore was across the creek, we took a water taxi from near our hotel to the Bur Dubai neighborhood. I couldn’t help but compare it to the Channel Cat in the Quad Cities, where Bean worked last summer—I think both services had about the same number of lifejackets.

We toured the متحف دبي (Dubai Museum), which was built in and under the Al Fahidi fort. This was a pretty neat introduction to the history of the emirate, showing a bit of the local culture. At DHS 3, it was very reasonable, as well.

After the Dubai Museum, we walked around the بستكية (Bastakia) neighborhood, which was pretty quiet. There were a couple of mildly interesting (and free) museums, including a coin museum, and a couple of traditional architecture museums. I got some good flower pictures, and enjoyed seeing a bit of the (now-ruining) old Dubai wall.

After the museums, we walked through a small سوق (souq, or market), where Opie bought a shirt. The shopkeeper kept trying to up-sell him to the DHS 15 shirts, but he held his ground and finally found a DHS 10 polo that was acceptable.

Next, we wandered around the historical homes of the ruling family. One of these had a display which Nathan tells me had, at one time, a little Arab man with a gun, but unfortunately he was gone. The staff at most of these museums seemed quite bored, and so followed us around pointing out additional areas of the museum for us to visit (whether we wanted to or not), opening doors, and generally treating us very well.

Nathan and I were standing on a ledge on the first floor of one old house when it crumbled beneath us. We quickly left before anyone realized what happened—but not before I snapped a picture of the damage.

At this point, we made our way back to the hotel. We stopped at a local grocery to buy some mixers for the duty-free liquor we bought en route to the UAE, and then caught an عبرة (abra) back to the hotel’s side of the creek. This was basically a small wooden boat, upon which I was quite terrified. It was only DHS 1, and we made it across successfully, so I’ll chalk that up as a solid cultural experience.

After freshening up at the hotel, we caught a cab to the Mall of the Emirates, one of the world’s largest malls. As we walked around the mall, the first word that came to mind was ridiculous. The other word that occasionally popped up was obnoxious, mainly in the Magic Planet area, which was basically a giant arcade full of rich tweens.

One of Nathan’s friends in Cairo asked him to pick up a Nokia E71 while he was here, so we did a bit of comparative shopping. The mall has a number of large electronics stores, and I was tempted to buy a GPS receiver, as well as an HD video camera. I’ve been considering buying both of these for some time—the first because it will help me accurately geocode my photos, and the second because I think it would be excellent to have some video of India. We have to go back on Saturday to pick up the phone, so I may still buy one or both—we shall see.

One of the more ridiculous things about the Mall of the Emirates is the fact that it has a large indoor ski run. The very idea of snow skiing in the Middle East is ridiculous enough, but this is something that really has to be seen to be believed. I was tempted to give it a try, but it was about $60 and we didn’t think it would be worth it.

We ate dinner at Japengo, a restaurant at the mall. I started with a tomato and mozzarella salad and enjoyed a tuna steak for my main course. Nathan had a veg pizza.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel. I wanted to stop at the hotel bar for a martini, which I’ve been craving since arriving in India. (I can’t have mixed drinks out at a bar, since I can’t trust the ice, and don’t have the means to make them at home.) Nathan ordered a Bloody Mary after much cajoling from the bartender. After the (marvelous) drinks, we went back up to our room, where we enjoyed gin and tonics and spent a couple hours taking long-exposure pictures of the Dubai skyline before hitting the sack.

All in all, it was a lovely (although exhausting) day in the Middle East.

Some random thoughts:

• It’s wonderful to be in a country where drivers actually use lanes.
• It’s also nice to be in a country where people drive on the right side of the road. (I mean that in both senses of the word.)
• There are a tremendous number of foreigners here.
• I’m having a very difficult time thinking in a third currency. I can think in rupees fairly easily now (If it’s over about ₨1000, I tend to convert to dollars first, but otherwise I’m fairly comfortable with rupees.), and dollars, but trying to add dinars has been tough. I’ve basically been dividing by three, which overestimates the cost—a fairly safe way of going about things.
• Thanks to Opie for the Arabic language text you read here.