Day 1 – Dubai at dawn

Well, here we are. The flight was an hour early and I may say that we were impressed with Emirates. The seats were wide enough, the food was OK, and the entertainment was good. We had some excitement getting through security at Sydney. The G seemed to fail every known scan and test. She had a nail file in her carry-on (not a good plan) and once she got through that they stopped her for the explosives test. I was waiting for a false positive but in the end we got through.

We haven’t seen much of Dubai yet though it was light by the time we were halfway to the hotel. We travelled for about 30 minutes through a concrete jungle. The hotel is massive. There is a picture below.

Here is a picture of how you would find us. This was useful research for me as my geography is hopeless. Our room is at the back of the hotel so you cannot see it in the picture which is just as well as I was standing naked in the window when the picture was taken. You wouldn't find us because we would have been out on a boat trip  or something.

More to follow - we are off on a boat trip very shortly.

Left: our bags. I was horrified that The G's was lighter than mine!!
Upper right: Row 83 is an awfully long way back.
Lower right: Arrival hall at Dubai featuring interesting silver columns.

Later ...

Hot. There is only one word for it and that is hot. But before the hot stuff hit us we had breakfast and that was good. We had had one breakfast on the plane but meals taken on a plane don’t count except as body clock adjustment assistance. And this was included in the room rate.

As I hinted above The G had booked us a boat trip. “Perhaps” she said “ after the boat trip we can go to the Dubai Mall and go up the Barj Khalifa. Then we could go to the Museum …”. “Hang on a minute” I said “we’re on holiday not an endurance course!”

So the boat trip was OK. We arrived early (very early) and were greeted by the Arab-in-charge of The Yellow Boats (http://theyellowboats.com/dubai). “Are you here for the 10:45 trip?” he asked. We confirmed that we were. “Ah,” he said “we have moved you to the 10:30 trip so I am pleased you are early. You were the only ones on the 10:45 and we will give you an upgrade for the 1030. Come back in 20 minutes.

Off we went to the mall where we bumped into a couple who had also apparently been the only people on the 10:45 and had been upgraded to the 10:30. Very fishy. But the trip was interesting but very hot. When the boat moved along it was cooler but whenever it stopped it was really hot. Quite what an upgrade offered is not clear: possibly the lifejacket.

The G and me practising selfies

The view from the boat is of a shoreline that is a cluster of high rise buildings of eclectic design but frequently influenced by what I imagine is Islamic architecture. There seem to be a vast number of hotels each with a vast number of rooms. This implies a very transient population I suppose. Certainly while wandering around today we found it very westernised. In many ways the view reminded me of Hong Kong though far less smelly!!

A couple of shots of the shoreline from the boat

The Burj Al Arab is claimed to be a seven star hotel. I am not sure what this would mean. You can think of a potentially infinite scale for measuring increasing degrees of opulence and silliness for hotels. Nonetheless the Burj Al Arab (www.jumeirah.com/en/hotels-resorts/dubai/burj-al-arab/) is a handsome building. It is apparently the third tallest hotel in the world at 321 metres and 40% of its height is unoccupied. The two tallest hotels are the JW Marriott (355 metres) and the Rose Rahaan (333 metres). Both of these are - surprise, surprise - in Dubai!! Incidentally so too are the fourth and fifth tallest.

The Burj Al Arab

The Arab-in-charge of our Yellow Boat (who claimed somewhat dubiously that his name was William) seemed to delight in pointing out more and more hotels.

The Kempinski on the left and the Kingdom of Sheba on the right

These places are just huge. Here is another one.

This is the Atlantis (http://www.atlantisthepalm.com). The room above the archway is US$35,000 a night. There is a minimum four night stay. We're booking a month at Christmas.

This picture is capable of improvement as demonstrated below.

I am not sure why I look like a constipated crab.

One sight that did meet our eyes as we powered through the water was Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum's yacht Dubai. This magnificent beast is 162 metres long and can apparently seat 115 for dinner. It is not the longest private yacht in the world. That honour goes to Sheikh Khalifa's (President of the UAE) yacht Azzam which is 180 metres long.

The Dubai. She cost $300m to build.

We were really hot when we got off the boat and hung in the mall outside Spinneys to cool off. Of course you all know that Spinneys (http://www.spinneys-dubai.com) is a supermarket started in Alexandria, Egypt in 1924. It opened in Dubai in 1961. It is frequented by expats because it has a pork section.

Spinneys Pork Section

We got a cab to the Dubai Mall partly because we had heard the mall was worth a visit and partly because we had a half formed idea that we would go up the Burj Khalifa. This building is 829.8 metres tall. That is seriously tall: it stretches the mind to think of the engineering that is needed to keep it upright. There is interesting stuff to be found if you have the energy and enthusiasm at www.burjkhalifa.ae/en/TheTower/FactsFigures.aspx. In fact we didn't go up the tower as you need to book this and it was all booked out.

This is one crazy-assed building, It has to wave around in the breeze.

Anway the mall was - well, it was a mall. Shops and stuff. And a really cool pair of purple alligator leather shoes by Magnanni (for me) but at the equivalent of $3,000 I thought I would probably die before I got a decent return on them!!

The G reminds me, however, that there is at least one respect in which the Dubai Mall can claim to be more than just a mall. It has a massive aquarium right there in amongst the fashion outlets, chocolatiers and souk jewellers (thedubaiaquarium.com/en/Default.aspx).

The Dubai Mall aquarium (or at least part of it).

While we were there we saw divers in the aquarium. I do not know what they were doing other than entertaining the crowd.

There were a number of really tasty chocolate shops all of which were those intimidating shops that are always empty with staff that you know will pounce on you immediately you enter. Anyway we did enter and I marched up to the young woman behind the counter and informed her that we planned to buy a single chocolate each. In fact we fought two one of which was the marzipan strawberry pictured at the left.