23 November - Dubai, UAE

Wednesday, 23 November. Dubai

Today was our last full day in Dubai. We had the buffet breakfast again in Celebrities this morning, although we weren’t the first ones today. Our plan for the day was to take the “Big Bus Tours” of Dubai – and we did.

We took the shuttle bus from the hotel to the Atlantis Hotel on Palm Island. This is a picture of the Jumeirah Palm Island that I found on the web. To get to the Atlantis Hotel, the roadway goes under the water to the encircling breakwater. It is immense. We had seen a video on the construction of Palm Island; they had workers walk around with GPS devices as they blew the sand to build up the shape of the island and the palm fronds. Wow!

The advantage of taking the Big Bus was being able to see the main sights of the city in a relatively short period of time. The bus is also called a HOHO bus – Hop On/Hop Off – because you can get on at any of the numerous stops and get off at any of them. So if you wanted to go the Mall of the Emirates and go indoor skiing, for example, you could. By the way, that didn’t interest us. We started on the Blue Bus (the beach route), and we went around the Dubai Mall where I took this picture of Burj Khalifa. To get a grasp of how tall it is, try counting the number of floors in just one of the sections of the building.

At Wafi Mall we switch to the Red Bus (City Tour), which took us along the Creek area. We got off at stop #9 and walked through the Gold Souk (it really reminded me of walk along 47^th Street in New York City – the Diamond District). We thought we were lost, and then we finally found what we were looking for – the Spice Souk. There were so many spices available from the Middle Eastern region of the world that it was hard even imagine what you would do with all of them. There’s just not enough space in this blog for all the pictures I took of the rows and racks of spices. We did buy some nice Saffron at what we thought was a good price.

We then decided to meander back to bus stop #9, hoping to find something to eat along the way. We found plenty of places to buy gold, diamonds, spices, scarves, electronics – but doesn’t anyone eat around here? We finally found a small shop with menus in Arabic (of course). We pointed, sat down, and waited. The food was pretty good, and the people watching was interesting. We paid and gave the owner a tip for his most courteous service, and we were back on our pursuit of the bus. One minute later, we were near water, which meant, the Creek, which meant, turn right and we would find the bus stop.

After re-boarding the bus and heading along the Deira side of the Creek, we crossed the Maktoum Bride to Bur Dubai, and we hopped off at #5 and took a one-hour Arabian Dhow Creek Cruise. The wooden dhow is still used today for transporting goods between ports, although it cannot carry as much as the larger container ships. While the dhow is used mainly for carrying cargo, there are many small boats to ferry passengers from one side of the creek to the other as there are very few bridges crossing it.

After our cruise, we walked the “only 10 minute walk” to Blue Bus stop #12. It was getting late in the day, and so this was the next-to-the last bus here at Burjuman. We eventually got along Jumeirah Beach Road as the sun was going down; timing didn’t work to get any picturesque photos of the sunset. We hopped off again at #16, Souk Madinat, where i was able to get this evening picture of Burj Al Arab. We had dinner again at The Noodle House, and asked them to spice it up a bit for us this time, as their “may be spicy” notation wasn’t very spicy. It still didn’t do much.

After dinner, we walked around the souk to see if there was any last-minute shopping we wanted to do (there wasn’t). Knowing that we were flying out in the morning, we decided that it would be a good thing to head back to the hotel and pack our bags. Fortunately, there were always plenty of taxis in front of the souk, and so we were back at the Royal Mirage within ten minutes. 

22 November - Dubai, UAE

Tuesday, 22 November. Dubai.

There was a free breakfast buffet in the Celebrities Restaurant, a very chic spot that we were the first ones in this morning around 8:15am. The coffee (Arabic, of course) was served in a French press pot, and it was quite tasty. There was a delicious assortment of meats, cheeses, and fruits. The fresh juice was also nice, and we truly enjoyed the quiet  atmosphere.

We took a taxi to Souk Madinat Jumeirah; you’ll recall that “souk” means a marketplace in the Arabic countries. We thought about walking there because it looked “close” on the map; that would have been a mistake. It was about five miles away, and there wasn’t really a walking path to get there. The good news is that taxi fares are relatively cheap in Dubai; one way to the souk was around 15 Dirhams (3.6 UAE Dirhams = 1 US Dollar).

As we walked around the souk, we realized that this was one of the best locations for a picture of the Burj Al Arab Hotel, the “Sailboat” hotel built on a man-made island. We walked through the meandering mazes of pathways and corridors until we found just the right vantage point. In this picture, you can see the restaurant “hanging” off to the left of the building, and the helipad on the right side. I’ve heard that Tiger Woods has driven a golf ball from the helipad, and that Andre Agassi has played a tennis match on it. I guess you can do just about anything with enough money.

After all the walking around in the souk, we were hungry. As we scouted out some of the restaurants, The Noodle House looked like a good choice for a couple reasons. We like Oriental food, and they were just opening for lunch. We started with a shared edamame, plus I had a non-shared pint of Tiger beer. The afternoon was officially off to a good start. We did a little shopping after lunch, and then we hailed a taxi back to the hotel. For dinner, we came back to the souk and ate at Brewsters.

21 November -- Dubai, UAE

Monday, 21 November – Dubai, UAE. Our cruise was coming to an end, and it was now time to leave our home for the past 18 days.

We pulled into port in Dubai early this morning. It was nice to see a sign that welcomed us to their city. Our bags had been packed and set outside our room last night – green tag # 22. We were to meet for debarkation in the Schooner Lounge at 9:05 in the morning. As we looked from our verandah we saw a long line of taxicabs waiting for us – this was going to be easy.

The first view of the city’s skyline looked like most other big city skylines except for the one needle thrusting itself higher and higher above the other buildings. There was no mistake what that building was – THE tallest building in the world – Burj Khalifa. The interesting story we heard (in Abu Dhabi) is that the builder was running out of money to complete the building. When it was finally done, and it came time to open the building and name it, the name came as a surprise – it was named for a powerful person in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, meaning that this person had “provided” the money to complete the building.

After breakfast and waiting for #22 to be called, we left the ship, found our luggage – but the orderly line of taxis was not to be found. The line seemed to move to where ever someone would walk to for a taxi, not great system. We envisioned a several-hour wait for a taxi. We saw our Swedish friends Kurt and Camilla who were in the same situation; but they had a plan (leave it to the Swedes; I am 50% Swedish, by the way!). Their idea was to take the FREE shuttle bus to the outlet mall and then get a taxi from there; there are always plenty of taxis at shopping malls – right?

Perhaps our first clue should have been that we were the only ones on the FREE bus to the outlet mall. After all, why would anyone get off a cruise ship and head straight to the outlet mall? I don’t know, but we were doing it.  The good news is that we weren’t in the ever-changing line for the taxis, and we were now out of the port area. We had maps and we were able to monitor our “progress” – for a while, anyway. It’s hard to monitor progress on a map when you are no longer on the map! More good news – at least it was four of us in this mess together.

We finally get to the outlet mall, somewhere between Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Outer Mongolia. But Kurt and Camilla were right; we caught a taxi in two minutes and we were headed back toward town. Twenty US Dollars later, Darlene and I arrived at our hotel, the One and Only Royal Mirage. The camels in front of the hotel entrance are a reminder of how we felt once we arrived – “We finally made it here!”

Even though we’d politely asked for an early check-in, that didn’t happen. In fact, the standard 2 PM check-in didn’t happen for us until 2:45, meaning we had lots of time to sit around the lobby, have an extravagantly priced lunch, and sit around some more while we “patiently” waited for our room to be ready. The only benefit of waiting in the lobby was the use of the free wi-fi – it was $30 a day in the room to use it. I just waited until I was going to the lobby; that’s partially why a few of my blog entries were delayed. We had dinner in the Olives Restaurant. We didn’t realize it was a buffet, but we were able to order from the menu; whew!

20 November -- Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Sunday, 20 November – Abu Dhabi, UAE, the richest city in the world. There is so much building going on in this city that you can’t look in any direction without seeing some huge building being built.

Sunday is the first day of the work in this part of the world, so it is quite a bustling morning as our tour bus heads away from the port toward the Sheikh Zayed (Grand) Mosque here in the capital of the United Arab Emirates. The Mosque is definitely grand as you see from this first photo taken from the bus as we approach before the crowds arrive. It is the largest mosque in the UAE; the eight largest in the world,; can accommodate 40,000 worshippers (counting the courtyard and other halls).

Because this is such a visitor highlight, and due to their strict guidelines, they provide robes and head scarves for all women who wish to go even into the immense courtyard area. The black robe isn’t the most flattering, and it’s hard to tell one person from another from the back, but at least there’s no decision on what to wear. Darlene had her own scarf with her; doesn’t she look stunning in her black robe and white shoes? Notice the intricate inlay work on the columns – you’ll see them again later; amazing!

We took our shoes off to enter the mosque – our group put ours in the shape of a square (ours were in my backpack). The ante-room was impressive with a clock that had the times for call to prayer and the type of prayer for that time. As we entered the main hall, it’s immensity became apparent. As we stepped on to the “world’s largest carpet,” we noticed what we thought were seams. We were told these are “rows” where the people know to kneel to keep lines straight and get more people in the hall. Here is a picture of the world’s largest chandlelier—33 feet in diameter and 49 feet high. The light coming through the open domes and striking the glass was very impressive.

I snapped quite a few pictures here at the mosque as it is definitely a photographer’s delight. Here is one of the hundreds of perfectly aligned columns with their festooned gold leaf tops and precious stone inlays. Once we were all back in our group, our next challenge was to find the bus; a 10-minute meandering walk through the parking lot proved not obstacle for us -- it was the last one there!

After the mosque we went to Heritage Village along the waterfront. This is an area that was developed so the peopled would not forget what the area was originally like. The village houses a small museum and depicts the daily activities of the Arab community prior to the discovery of oil in the region.

There were various types of tents sent up, such as the Bedouin-style tents that we’d seen in the desert lands of Jordan. We also saw the mainstay of the cargo fleet, the camel. As you can see, he has large teeth, they didn’t look well brushed, and we weren’t going too close to him to pet him – no one else did either.

An interesting part of the Heritage Village is that it sits on beautiful waterfront opposite the high-rise buildings of downtown Abu Dhabi. There were many intriguing venues, including an amphitheatre that faced the water, and the opportunity for pictures was abundant – as was evident by the number of people snapping pictures. So of course, I called Darlene over, and she obliged. I don’t know what the building is in the background – I just liked it for a backdrop.

Well, we’re nearing the end of our last day of the cruise. As we pulled out of port and the blaze of the lights from the oil-driven city are behind us, the beautiful sunset that was there long before oil – and will be there long after oil is used up – told us that the end of another day was upon us. Tonight was our last night on the Brilliance of the Seas, and the photo below shows that we, indeed, had brilliance on the seas!