Dubai - day 1

Well my first impressions of Dubai were "It's Pink"!!!

We walked out of the airport to the rows of waiting taxi's. There are several taxi companies here and they are all beige. The only way to differentiate them is by the colour of the roof. There is red, green, yellow, orange, blue and as I was waling ahead of Mark, I was directed to a pink topped taxi with Ladies taxi written on the side. They are clearly provided, so a woman is not alone in a car with a man here.



Out stepped the driver fully dressed in pink. From shoes to head scarf.... pink!!! Then as we were driving we passed endless gardens of pink and purple petunias. I was thinking everything looked pink but realised the tint on the car windows was slightly pink. It was a surreal first impression of Dubai



As only I can find, our hotel was very obscure to find and even the taxi drivers are a little bamboozled when we say where to take us. The written directions from the hotel were "ask the driver to drop you at the car park of the Sheik Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding, then from there ask the security guard to direct you to the hotel". The security guard had one of the cleaners walk us through little winding laneways for about 100m to our hotel. Its in Bastakiya which is a very old early 1900's precinct where wealthy Persian Trades lived near the Dubai Creek.



Our buildings are now a little boutique hotel, an Art Gallery and Cafe. We had to push open dbl heavy timber doors to step through one small room into this internal courtyard. Fortunately, even though we arrived at 7am, we were able to go straight to our room.

This is the veranda our room leads off. There are 2 rooms off this veranda and our room is the final 4 doors you can see. From this veranda we have rooftop views of the mosque, and wind towers on the surrounding buildings.

We showered and had a 2 hr nap and after b'fast in the courtyard here, we headed off to explore. This Bastakiya area is becoming an arts precinct. So many of the buildings are housing art exhibitions or little museums etc. Its very peaceful here.



After a walk to the Dubai Musem we jumped on the tourist bus and enjoyed the running commentary as we went around. This picture shows the development that has happened on the big palm tree islands. This is the road that is the trunk of the tree. Note the monorail running above the middle of the road. Its all very densely built up for a big part of this whole development.

It took seeing a couple of these little buildings that are everywhere around the city. It is an airconditioned bus stop. Built to still encourage public transport use even during the searing heat of summer here.



By late afternoon we got off at Dubai Mall which is also the precinct of Burj Khalifa. Its fascinating to be so close to such an extremely tall building. We enjoyed a cup of tea on a terrace and Mark said he was happy just to see it and didn't need to go up to the observation deck. I thought we should still go .. just for Mitchell who would likely berate us for not doing it.

However, it was not meant to be. The limit the numbers and had sold out. Of course they could make an exception, if we paid an exception amount of money (like AUD $130 each). As we were feeling ambivalent anyway we didnt bother and left happy.

Not going up did NOT stop Mark taking many many photos of it!!!



After a LONG day we figured dinner at a restaurant near the hotel was just what we wanted. We enjoyed a small meal of local dishes.

Walking back through Bastakiya we came upon this little courtyard where they were holding an outdoor cinema. Not a huge group of people but it looked very inviting and had we not been so tired, we may have stayed.