Dubai 19 Jan 2017

A view of Dubai creek today

I left you last night as we were about to go out to dinner at the Dubai Golf Club. We caught a taxi outside the flat and headed the short distance to the club. Driving anywhere here seems to involve doing U-turns on dual carriageways and lots of last minute lane swapping! 

The Golf Course is a green oasis in the middle of skyscraper blocks and is playable day and night as all the fairways are floodlit. 

Dinner was very good and the wines being showcased very tasty. Siobhan, who was hosting the dinner, introduced each wine and gave us a background to the provenance and production of the wines. I was most impressed with the 'port-like' wine from Argentina. After dinner we headed back to the flat and bed.

This morning, we had another slow start, so, late morning we headed towards to Metro again. We'd decided that the old part of the city might be an interesting excursion. The first train took us to BurJuman where we changed lines and caught another train to Al Ras.

This station is on the northern side of the creek and is home to a variety of souks. The first we came across sold gold. The gold varies in quality and is sold at the market price for gold set twice daily. My wallet stayed firmly in my pocket! We were verbally encourage to purchase anything from pashminas to watches to iPhones, but refrained. The streets here are all narrow and thronged with people. Most goods seem to be delivered by small van and then barrowed to their final destination. The clothing and textile shops were bursting at the seams with bright colourful garments and rolls of materials stacked ceiling high.

My favourite part of the souk was the one selling spices. The aromas were wonderful, especially the frankincense. Some shops specialise in saffron, but much of it seemed to be far too cheap and available in large quantities to be the real thing. Our only issue was finding somewhere to get a soft drink.

Eventually, we made it to the waterfront where small water taxis ply their trade back and forth across the creek. We will doubtless explore this area further in the next few days. There were several dhows tied up along the creek, all loaded to the gunwales with goods.

Having failed to find lunch there, we caught the train back to the Dubai Mall which lies in the shadow of the Burj-al-Khalifa. The Mall, is enormous, gigantic, humongous! Quite aside from a huge waterfall and skating rink, there is a massive aquarium in the middle of the Mall. It's a bit surreal watching Reef sharks gliding by which you do your shopping. Again, we will explore the Mall further in the coming days.

Lunch was taken in the food court from an Iranian stand. Delicious BBQ meat with yoghurt and flatbread.

Back at the flat, it was time to sit on the balcony and watch life go on below.