The first night we took the metro west to the station & then walked for about 2km along what seemed like an endless system of travelators to the huge shopping mall & found Pascal waiting in front of the giant aquarium with an 8m glass wall.
Pascal & Lotus took us outside to a concourse next to an artificial lake in front of the Pinnacle building Burj Khalisa, at 828m the tallest in the country (& the world?). Here there was an amazing display of fountains with appropriate music. This was followed by an excellent dinner in a Lebanese restaurant.
The next day Lotus took us on a tour of the developments starting with the Souk Madinat a modern reproduction of an old souk full of antique & souvenir shops. Then on to the huge 'Palm', an artificial reef with housing on each of the fronds & a giant set of hotel developments on the outer ring. The scale was breathtaking but much of the architecture was too ornate for our tastes. From there to the Marina development of multi storey blocks much like a scaled up Gold Coast. The tower blocks here are for hotels & holiday apartments whereas in most other parts they are for homes & offices.
Lotus then took us to the Mall of the Emirates, yet another giant mall of very upmarket labels with a ski slope & winter sports playground. This was too bizarre to be believed as inside everybody is rugged up with outfits which are hired as part of the entry fee. There was a ski slope of about 200m, complete with ski tow & chair lifts, a toboggan run & other oddities. The ice & snow are real which is amazing as the outside temperatures reach up into the 40sC in summer & were in the mid 30s when we were there.
The best sight of the day we saw was a lady fully covered from head to foot in black without any eye slits climb into a land cruiser to drive away. Didn’t wait to see if she hit anything.
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The next day we crossed the creek on an old style ferry boat for the bus station to go about 20k to Al Sharjah, the next of the UAE states. The bus was a double decker coach & the ride was about $2.50. All the route was either built up with tower blocks or was being developed & the road system of freeways is massive but still very busy. A taxi took us from the bus station to the Museum of Islamic Arts, a magnificent reproduction of an old souk done in the 80s full of material on the development of the Muslim religion including the 5 tenets & the Hajj pilgrimage routine. There was also an excellent section on scientific development by Muslims.
Retracing our way back to the bus station we returned to Dubai fairly tired & after dinner caught a bus out to another bus station. We then thought we would just retrace our route back but decided to take the next bus to the south western end of the metro line. To our surprise our trip ended at the Port gates where we were turfed off by security as we didn’t have a ‘dock pass’ so we had to wait for the next bus just outside the compound. Luckily this didn’t take long & the next bus took us back along the massive 5 lane freeway back into the city.