Day 6 – We have some more interesting videos; however, we can’t download them from the ship so we will download them all when we reach Singapore.
We were picked up at 8:00am on Wednesday by our tour guide Mohammed for our drive to Abu Dhabi, a tour of Abu Dhabi and then to our ship. Mohammed was a “George Clooney” type of person and at all of the tourists spots that we stopped at, people wanted to take pictures of him
Abu Dhabi is one of 7 states within the UAE and is the official capital. Dubai is another state. Each of the 7 states is ruled by a family whose head is the King. In all 7 of these “states” the King is the absolute ruler.
While Abu Dhabi is the capital of UAE there are only a few sights there so that is why we flew into and stayed in Dubai.
Our first stop was the Formula One race track just outside of Abu Dhabi. There is also a big Ferrari display there. It is an amazing track with a luxury hotel built right in the infield. There is also a 4 lane bridge right over the track to get to the infield.
Our second stop was the largest mosque in the city and the second largest in the world. For their Friday prayers, the mosque holds 41,000 people.
The main room holds the largest one piece carpet in the world. It took 1,200 Iranian ladies working day and night for 2 years to complete it.
Then we went to their Heritage Village, a made for tourists replica village that was very interesting and they did a good job depicting the past. We also had a buffet of local dishes for lunch there.
We then visited the Emiratis Hotel, which is an exact duplicate of the King of Abu Dhabi’s palace except the color is different. In the hotel, every room comes with its own butler.
We went inside the main lobby of the hotel, and it just “drips” of gold. It was built in 2005 at a cost of 10 billion dollars. The north wing of the Hotel is reserved for the King and anyone he wants to stay in the 552 room section.
Then it was to the cruise ship terminal where we boarded very quickly and went up to our room to unpack. Before we had our carry on's unpacked our regular suitcases came so we were able to totally unpack very early.
We fell asleep and by the time we woke up, it was too late to have dinner in the dining room and see the show so we went to the buffet and ate and then just made it to the show.
The show was a singer and then a violin player and they were both good.
The casino was next. Our Casino Host, Silva, was a host on our July 4th trip so that was fun to see he again. We only knew a couple of the dealers.
We played until 12:30am when we entered Dubai waters where gambling is not allowed. At that time both of us were down just a little and totally tired.
Day 7 – We took our time getting up as there were only a couple of things that we had missed in Dubai that we wanted to see. We took the free shuttle into town and then a taxi to see the home of the son of a Sheik built back in the 1940’s. Basically, this was the King and his family’s first real home after moving in from the desert. It was nice but not very elaborates like they have today.
Then we walked a ways and visited a market where we bought some must have stuff and then took a boat ride across the creek to the markets on that side.
We had viewed an Andrew Zimmer food show on Dubai and we got a cab to go to one of the restraurants that we thought would be very interesting and wow – were we ever right.
When we told the cab driver were we wanted to go, the first thing he said was “why do you want to go to that part of town – that is not for tourists.” We said that is why we wanted to go there.
We had dishes of salad, brain, mutton, chicken, rice, spinach and some great flat bread in various combinations of dishes and then sweet rice for desert. We had invited our cab drive to eat with us so that we could hear about working conditions for the non-locals and also to make sure that we had a cab ride back to the ship when we were down eating.
We met the owner as soon as we sat down as we were the only people in the restraurant not from Dubai. He was a wonderful man and we truly enjoyed eating his food and the company of him and also the cab driver.
Basically, we had 4 or 5 courses for three people and our total cost was $10. For the cab, we had control over the cab for about 3 hours and our cost was $27.
As we leave Dubai, it is truly an amazing city to see. If you want history, there is very little here. If you want to see old buildings, there really aren’t any. This is a 50 year old town whose goal is to have the biggest, the tallest, the largest, etc. of everything. We, in the United States cannot even come close to comprehend how much money these Kings make from oil – the amount is staggering.
We were in their tallest building in the world and they are building a much bigger one. They have the largest man-made island and they are building a bigger one.
The Dubai Mall holds more stores that any other mall in the world and they are building a bigger one to be the largest in the number of stores, cubic feet and in every category, the biggest. This new mall will be twice as big as the Mall of America.
They are building their one “Disney Style” theme park and it will be the largest in the world.
As our guide said, the only thing that was here was sand and dates and if they don’t build it bigger, better and fancier, no one will come. Everything that they do, they want to be the biggest and the best so people will come to Dubai. There is also no income tax; however, housing is very expensive.
They also build fast; a 70 story building is built in a year. They built a 40 mile local city railroad with 40 stops, 20 of them underground in 4 years. In the US, we can’t even finish the environmental study in 4 years.
Lots more to tell but we will save that for later.
The show was a singer from England who was very good.
Dinner was our first in the restaurant Blu and while the food was good, we had to wait a 1/2 for a table.
After dinner we of course went to the casino where Barb won a little and Ed lost a little.
Tomorrow is a day at sea ad finally a day to just relax on the deck.
Night
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| Lunch |
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| The Lobby of the Emiratis Hotel |
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| The front of the center section only of the Emiratis Hotel |
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| Showing Barb how to wear the scarf |
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| Part of the main prayer hall of the Mosque |
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| Found another scarf!! |
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| Lunch in Dubai |
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In front of the second largest Mosque in the world
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