Abu Dubai

 We have been home over a week now and finally over jet lag after a 16 hour flight. I finished organizing my pictures and wanted to get this last post done before I forget where I was! 

Our last stop was Dubai so we took a long day trip to Abu Dubai which is about an hour or so away, but of course with all the traffic it took longer to get out of the city. 

Abu Dubai is the capital city of the UAE. It is also the largest and wealthiest of the seven emirates and still has massive oil reserves, unlike Dubai. It has also been ranked the safest city in the world for many years.

Our first impressive of the city is that it is not as frantic as Dubai and the traffic was certainly not as heavy. There were lots of sky scrapers but more open spaces….

We went up to one of the observation towers to have  a look…most of the city is located on an island and there are many more islands around…

Abu Dubai is also considered more of a cultural city than Dubai so most of our tour centered around the grand buildings there. 

Our first stop was Louve Abu Dubai which is a fairly new museum. The government paid 545 million to use the Louve name for their museum and most days it is free to enter….

The building looks like it is floating on water…

We didn’t have time to go inside so we explored the grounds, this unique building was just next door…

There was an outdoor exhibit of local art and design which we enjoyed…

Our next stop was the Presidental Palace which is a municipal building housing the offices of the President, Vice President and top government officials. It is called Qasr El Watan and was open to the public in 2019. On first sight it looks stunning with its’ white granite, limestone and gleaming surfaces…

This place is huge…

Just look at size of the doors!

Inside there is a Grand Hall and two wings…

The scale of this building…

The tile work and the angles of the building were unbelievable….

Some of the details…

Looking down the wings…

The colors are very neutral all beige, brown and blue.

One Wing holds the Royal Library which holds priceless works that trace the history of the Emirates and the Arab world…

Then there are the official meeting rooms and dining rooms for visiting delegations…

The grounds were just as impressive…

This palace is rated as the top attraction in the Middle East and in the top few of the world and we could see why! 

Our final stop was at a building equally as impressive and that was the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque which was opened in 2007. The interesting thing about this mosque is that we had to enter through an underground shopping centre and food court including a fancy Tim Hortons…

 Then there were long moving escalators and moving sidewalks before we even got up to enter the mosque…

The vision of the late founding father of the UAE, the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is a place of worship that welcomes people from all walks of life and serves as a global centre for Islamic culture and tolerance. One of the largest mosques in the world, with space for up to 50,000 worshippers, it is an architectural masterpiece both in scale and detail. Constructed from dazzling white marble, the mosque is adorned with 86 white marble domes and features four gilded minarets, one at each corner. Its interior is characterised by more than 1,000 precious gem-embedded columns, a series of reflective pools, and marble mosaic decorated courtyard. The colossal prayer halls are lit by huge Swarovski crystal chandeliers with the main hall floor home to the world’s largest hand-woven carpet.   

We went near sunset so the colors of the mosque were even more brilliant….

 We had to dress accordingly, though Don didn’t have to cover up this time.

Here are the beautiful reflective pools…

The gold topped columns…

Beautiful courtyards…

The beautiful carpets and chandeliers…

The mosaics were everywhere…

Stained glass and filigree everywhere as well…

Getting to be the end of a long but very interesting day…

Our guide and Don on the way back to the bus.

The day was just a glimpse of Abu Dubai and it is a place we would have liked to spent more time.

This is the end of a month of experiencing many new cultures, meeting wonderful people and most all learning that in this world we are more alike than different. We are so glad we decided to visit this part of the world. 

Dubai, UAE

 Our last short flight brought us to Dubai, one of the seven Emirates in the UAE ( United Arab Emirates). The UAE was founded in 1971 when 7 separate countries joined together to form this new country. 

It is an absolute monarchy with the titles passed down through the males of a single family called the Al Maktoum family. The present ruler is Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. Their estimated wealth is 18 billion dollars.

Our first impression of Dubai was the amount of traffic…like Egypt it was crazy but the cars were a lot bigger and more  expensive but instead of chaos the traffic was orderly but barely moved. Most of the day here you wait 20 minutes to get through a light and then a few meters on you wait again…lots of patience needed! 

Dubai is the most populous city in the UAE with almost 4 million people with approximately 90% of the population being foreigners who support the local economy.

Dubai is known as The City of Gold because of its’ wealth. We visited a huge Gold Souq where the gold shops go on for miles.Gold is of high quality here and comes in many shapes and sizes….

Jewelry box at the entrance of the souq…

Hundreds of gold shops…

Here you can even see gold face coverings…

And the largest gold ring in the world…

It weighs 64 kilograms and is studded with precious stones and of course in the Guiness Book of Records.

In the early days Dubai’s economy was centered on pearl diving and trading and then in 1966 oil was discovered which made the emirate very rich. However now most of the oil reserves are gone and the economy has become more diverse with Dubai being a centre for luxury tourism, finance and real estate.

Doha has so many skyscrapers but Dubai has many more…

Some of the skyscrape…there is construction taking place at every turn…

 

We stayed in a hotel on Dubai Creek which is in the downtown core and all you could see were tall buildings, a view from our balcony…

Dubai Creek runs through the city with long walkways on both sides which people use for walking, biking, etc. It is a natural saltwater creek that extends in about 14 kms from the sea and is very important to the economy of Dubai in that it supports the marine industry of transport and trade. It is very well kept and a beautiful part of the city. 

At sunset…

Because Dubai is so rich it has many landmarks such as the Burj Khalifa which is the highest building in the world at 2718 ft. We could see it from our balcony as it features a light show every evening, it is the white tower in the background…

There is a large light show every evening at the base of the building at the Dubai Fountain…

Dubai has lots of firsts including the world’s only 7 Star Hotel called Burj Al Arab which costs many tens of thousands to stay there…we didn’t!!!

Dubai also has many beaches both public and private and also natural and manmade. This was a popular public beach…

Dubai has many interesting museums as well including the Museum of the Future which is quite the building inside and out…

Inside…

The displays show what the future holds for Dubai.

Thought this note was interesting…

And of course there is always a visit to the mosque. This mosque is called The Al Farooq Omar bin Khattab Mosque which is one of the largest in the UAE. It is known as Dubai’s very own “Blue Mosque” inspired the one in Turkey.

This time we were dressed for the occasion…

Inside the mosque there are lots of stained glass and 21 domes…

Our guide, a young Muslim man from Pakistan helps us understand their religion giving us a lesson in the Five Pillars of Islam… faith, prayer, charity, fasting during Ramadan and a pilgrimage to Mecca. He was a devout Muslim who worked for 11 months in Dubai and went home for one month a year to see his family. He told us that is quite common for the foreigners who work here.

We drove through some of the neighborhoods and there were a lot of big houses. The neighborhoods where the residents live are often off limits to the foreigners…

Dubai is not all new and shiny as there is Old Dubai which is marked by the Dubai Frame, another tall structure with a viewing deck that you can see over the old and new Dubai. We didn’t get a chance to visit but I bet the views are wonderful…

My picture from the bus but a better picture from the internet… the world’s largest picture frame.

We took an Abra which is the traditional wooden boats that ferry people back and forth across the creek…

Here is Old Dubai there are no skyscrapers…

The Historical District has been recreated to show the first settlements in Dubai which were made of mud houses. It was settled in the 1800s by Persian merchants who established the area as a centre of trade located right on the Creek…

We stopped into a Michelin Star restaurant for some Arabic coffee and dates which is the traditional offering given to guests. You sip the strong coffee and eat the sweet dates…

Stopping for a rest…

Our last day in Dubai we had hoped to do some sightseeing on our own but we both woke up feeling under the weather, I think after a month of traveling we were both worn down. So we rested that day and missed out on a number of places.

One was the Dubai Mall which was in downtown Dubai close to our hotel and we had passed it a number of times. It is the largest mall in the world by area with over 1200 shops and is the size of 55 football fields. It also has over 200 places to eat, an aquarium and numerous other attractions. It sees over 100 million visitors a year…a shopper’s paradise!

One of the art installations I would have liked to have seen was the indoor waterfall…photo courtesy of the Internet…

The other place we missed seeing was the Palm Jumeriah which was a neighborhood built from reclaimed land in a series of artificial archipelagos. It is shaped like a palm tree when viewed from above. This unique island is home to some of Dubai’s top luxury resorts including the famous Atlantis.

This area is often referred to as the Crown Jewel of Dubai attracting the rich and famous from all over the world…too bad we missed it! 

Dubai has so much to see and do but it is a very expensive city to visit. Most hotels are hundreds of dollars a night, restaurants the same and all attractions are very expensive to enter. It was the most costly place we visited on this trip and we were glad to have experienced some of it. Only one more place to visit and we are on the way home…