Dubai

Were do I begin...for starters Holy Cow, I was in freaking Dubai! I, never in a million years, would have ever thought I would have the opportunity to visit a middle eastern city. We all hear about Dubai, we all see pictures of the hotels, the beaches, the city, yet how many people do you know that can say "Yes, I have been to Dubai!" Well, It was all Viv's idea. I wanted to go to Italy and see all that Italy had to offer, Viv had other plans. He wanted to visit somewhere that if we were living in the US, would be harder to visit, like Dubai. It's a 8 hour plane ride from London, and you fly over city's you only hear about on CNN. We flew directly over Kuwait and Baghdad, and a few hours later we landed in Dubai. For starters, the bathroom was different. I walked into a bathroom stall in the airport to see a hole in the ground..I stopped, looked at it, and then looked at it some more...I said to myself, um what do I do?! I then left the stall, and went into another stall, where I saw my friend, a western toilet. Phew! After we located out luggage we walked outside to be knocked back by the heat and humidity at 9 at night. At 9pm, the humidity was unbearable. Just waiting for a cab, I looked like I had been at the gym, with water beading on my forehead from just standing. The hotel was about 20 minutes from the airport. We stayed at the Sheridan located on Jumeirah Beach. Our hotel room had the largest balcony that overlooked the resort, the ocean, and the high rises. The following morning we woke up to hotness! The temperature at 9am was 110 degrees, and with the humidity it felt like you were in the Devil's layer. We decided to visit the pool, seeing that it was the only thing you could do outside.

I don't know why the hotel even has lawn chairs because you can't use them, its too bloody hot! Viv and I were in the pool then entire time we were at the pool. They had a great bar that you could swim up to and sit in the water while enjoying a pretty cocktail with an umbrella in it. All the people at the resort were European. How could I tell you ask?....well, the size of their tinny speedo's gave it away. I think that there might have been 2-3 other men wearing board shorts at the pool, they were obviously British, while all the other men wore ittsy-bitsy-tinny-weeny speedo's...and no ladies, no one at the pool looked like David Beckham in a speedo, if you catch my hairy, fat, ugly drift. After our fingers looked like prunes, Viv and I decided to check out the local mall, seeing that everyone told us Dubai has the best malls in the world, aka, Heaven! What makes things even better is that there is no personal or income taxes in Dubai, so what you see on the price tag, is what you pay! The currency in Dubai is the Dirham, although many places you go the price tag is in Durham and also USD, although you can't pay in the USD. We hopped into a cab and found our way to the Dubai Mall, aka, the largest mall in the world! Did I mention that Dubai was my Heaven? The Dubai Mall cost 20 billion dollars to build and has over 1,200 shops and over 12 million square feet. Its bran-spanking new and still hasn't had its grand opening yet. There were a lot of stores that still had not opened. But, boy do they like western food; Uno Chicago Pizzeria, Taco Bell (where we had lunch, it was the best lunch ever!) Hardee's, Caribou Coffee, Burger King, Starbucks Coffee (no surprise, a grande soy latte cost 9$USD!) KFC, Panda Express, Subway, Johnny Rocket's, Dunkin Donuts, just to name a few that we saw. Also lots of western shops, Bloomingdales, Express, Gap, BCBG, Forever 21, Clair's, Guess, Coach, Crocs, and many more. I wasn't expecting to see so many western stores, most of these stores and restaurants can't be found in London, so It was surprising to see them somewhere so far away. But this mall doesn't just offer shopping and eating, of course not, not in Dubai!...there is a 22 cinema screen theater, a fashion catwalk atrium where the floor rises up and becomes a catwalk, there is a section of the mall called Fashion Island, and its my Mecca! There are 70 stores dedicated to haute couture. (Heaven I tell you!) There is a replica of London's Regent street, a Aquarium that's in the Guinness book of world records for having the worlds largest viewing panel, an Olympic sized ice rink, the largest gold souk, a retractable roof in part of the mall, a supermarket and an organic foods market too. And did I mention the 150-room luxury hotel that you can stay in when you can't find your car in the 14,000 parking spots? Needless to say, by the time we left this mall, our feet, our backs and wallets were hurting! Oh, I almost forgot to tell you...well, I didn't know that it's against Muslim religion for women to show their shoulders in public, and so when we got to the mall, Viv had to run into Gap and get me a scarf to cover my shoulders because I was wearing a strapless dress...always do your research before going to another country! After lots and lots of walking, we headed back to the hotel had a bite to eat and called it a night.

The following day was nice. Nice meaning that it was only 100 degrees and the humidity was at 70 percent, so the pool we headed to. Today you could actually sit in your lawn chair for 20 minutes before your head started beading up with water. The pool was great, but I was more interested in the ocean. Dubai sits in the Arabian Gulf, and the gulf felt like a hot tube. I'm not a big ocean, sea creature kind of girl, so I was delighted to see the bottom of the ocean was clean with white sand and not a fish in sight. I think the water was just too hot for fish and such, but it wasn't too hot for me! I swam around like a fish and would run to the pool to get cooled off from the hot waters of the gulf. I did some shelling and found some great shells along the beach. The entire day was spent back and forth between the pool and the ocean, with a quick break for lunch at the hotels buffet...not a bad day!

After a day of sun and sand, Viv and I needed to spend our last day seeing Dubai. What a better way then a double-decker bus tour! The tour lasted 6 hours! And we saw it all, Palm Island, Burj Al Arab, The Gold Souk, the Dubai Marina, and Burj Dubai.

I really enjoyed Palm Island and being able to be on the island. For those of you who don't know, Palm Island is the world first man made, artificial islands located in the Arabian Gulf. They look like a giant Palm from the sky and can be seen in space. Its said to be the 8th wonder of the world. There are all kinds of residential and commercial properties on the island. Trump has a building being built and the Atlantis hotel is located at the crescent of the Palm. The Palm has its own monorail public transportation system. When your driving on the island, you can't really tell that your on this palm shaped structure, but who cares, its a really cool concept. With the success of the Palm, the developers announced a larger Palm to be started in 2004 and to take 10-15 years to build, but that was before the global credit crunch that has all but killed the real estate capital of the world, Dubai. I know that real estate on the Palm can't be cheep, because in every driveway that I saw there was a luxury car in the driveway, and when I saw luxury, I don't mean a Mercedes C-class, I mean a Maserati, Ferrari, Lamborghini...and who is surprised, after all, Dubai has the highest per capita incomes in the world.

We also visited the Gold Souk, about 30 minutes from our hotel. Its a traditional market in Dubai located in the heart of eastern Dubai's commercial business. 1 in 5 people in Dubai purchase 5 pieces of gold a year, and this is where they do it! By some estimates, approximately 10 tons of gold is present at any given time in the Souk. And gold isn't just what they offer, they have diamonds and exotic stones galore. Just walking around the Souk, you are mesmerized my the windows staring in your direction. Merchants walk the street trying to get you to visit their store, with bribes of water and juice to get you out of the hot weather. I have never seen such amazing jewelry in my life (with the exception of any Cartier store) And just about every store had a customer doing some browsing. Nothing has the price on it, the merchants come up with the price by weighing the piece and looking at the days gold price, then you can barter with the guy, hoping to come home with a prize piece for a cheep price. In one window, we saw a diamond ring that was 15 million dollars, and it had to be the size of an strawberry! You needed two fingers to keep that ring on. It was terribly hot (imagine that) so we walked around the market for about a half hour until we had to get back on our air conditioned double-decker bus.

We had a chance to see the Burj Dubai in all its glory. The Burj Dubai is the world tallest building at 2,684 feet high with 160 floors and the worlds fastest elevator. Its architects are familiar names; Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, who are the Chicago based architects and engineers responsible for that other tall building, Sears Tower (I can't call it Willis yet) The building cost 4.1 billion to construct, and if your thinking that maybe a corner office in this building could be nice, well get your check books out, because it will cost you $4,000 per square foot to occupy this famous space. It took them 5 years to build it, and it will also offer a hotel and will be the first world's tallest structure in history that includes a residential space.

The hotel and residence have a famous name attached to it: Giorgio Armani! That's right, Mr. Armani is opening his very first hotel in the Burj Dubai and he will also offer residences as well, for a measly beginners asking price of $3,500 per square foot. I wonder if they will throw in a nice Armani suit for that price?! The buildings grand opening is slated for mid-September and they better hurry, seeing that Skidmore, Owings and Merrill will be completing the new "worlds tallest" back in Chicago in a few years.

Last but not least, the Burj Al Arab. It's the only hotel in the world that has a 7-star ranking. And is the second tallest building in the world used exclusivity as a hotel. It's located on its own man-made island that has a giant, intimidating gate that you have to access to get to the hotel. Well, we didn't access the gate. The only way to see the hotel in all its glory is to either 1. pay $1,500 a night to stay there or 2. have a dinner reservation, which you can imagine isn't cheep. We looked into having dinner but decided that $300.00 a plate without drinks wasn't a top priority (I'm more of a taco bell kind of girl anyways) As you drive around Dubai, you can see the top of the building from the streets, and I was always trying to catch a good picture of it. The building is build to resemble sails of a dhow, a type of Arabian vessel. It seems to be a very iconic symbol for Dubai, much like the opera house is to Sydney or the Eiffel tower is to Paris. The hotel coat $650 million to build, but by charging $1,500 a night and $300 a plate for dinner, I think they got their money back real fast! The largest suit in the hotel is 8,400 square feet and cost $28,000 a night!!! Ok, so I'm going to have to wait to win the lottery, actually with that price, a few lotteries! A long day of sightseeing Dubai was behind us now and it was time to eat.

Viv and I decided to go back to Chicago for dinner...actually, we decided to go to Uno Chicago Pizzeria for a dinner of deep dish. Was it good, yes. Was it just like at home, no. The pizza was a little different, the pepperoni was not spicy , and the sausage was crumbled all over the pizza and didn't taste all that great, but I'm not complaining. There were pictures of Chicago all over the restaurant and there were baseball games in the TV's...we felt like we were back home, that is until we looked around and saw all the other customers in the restaurant, and looked at the water bottle that was written in Arabic. It was nice, and with our belly's full we were ready to catch our 3am flight to Maldives for the next leg of our holiday...

Pictures left to right:

1.Palm Island from the sky- no I didnt take this pic

2. Burj Al Arab, the 7-star, uber expensive hotel

3. A few buildings in the city, business district

4. Worlds tallest buiding, Burj Dubai

5. Me wanting everything in the Gold Souk

6. A view of our hotel pool with Viv floating arond.

7. My favorite lunch, Taco Bell!

8. Viv and myself at the beach

9. The view of the resort and gulf from our rooms balcony.