First Tour in Dubai

We were collected by the tour group Arabian Adventures at 2.45 pm. This tour, the City of Merchants - Dubai City Tour is an historical excursion. Our route took us to the magnificent Jumeirah Mosque, several modern palaces - currently occupied by sheiks and princes. The palaces are huge, making Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle look small. One of them reminded me in size but not architecturally, of Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna. Understandably but regretfully we were forbidden to take photos for security reasons. The palaces were sprawled along the coast.

The first thing to ‘hit you’ about Dubai is the amount of lush green parks, huge expanses of green lawns and stunning gardens all found in a desert location. All of Dubai’s water is desalinated. I was amazed at the number of hospitals of all different specialties and so many specialist medical centres. We are told that Dubai is venturing into the market of attracting people from other countries to come for medical and dental treatments/procedures. Everything is certainly clean and spotless here - similar to Singapore except in size. The sky scrapers are incredible. It seems every architect has been out to be more ‘out there’ than the one who designed the previous building. They are all so different - some even look uneven - as if they will topple over.

The roads in Dubai are in good condition. There are so many 6 or 8 lane expressways that surround the place. This doesn’t prevent it having traffic jams, though.

We stopped in Bastakiya to admire the old wind towered houses which were built by wealthy merchants.

Close by stands the beautifully restored 150 year old Al Fahida Fort. It was built in 1787 to defend the city against invasion and was opened as a museum in 1971. The Dubai Museum is a must if you are visiting Dubai. Our tour only allowed us 45 minutes here which does not give you enough time to do justice to the amazing displays. The museum’s diverse collection of exhibits offer a fascinationg insight into the rich history and cultural heritage of Dubai.

If we have another Dubai stop-over on another trip, we would like to visit the museum again. Some of the display is dedicated to showing the city’s past as an important pearl diving and trading centre. Archeological discoveries suggest that, as long as 4,000years ago, small fishing communities lived along the coast of the Arabian Gulf on the site of modern Dubai. Dubai Creek was a busy port of call on the ancient trade route between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.

From here we continued our tour by ‘abra’- crossing Dubai’s Creek - the word creek suggests to me a small river - not so in Dubai. From here we again see the modern metropolis with the splendid architecture dwarfing the bustling alleys of the gold and spice ‘souks’. Compared to Morocco the spice souks were small and limited but “wow” is all I can say about the gold souks - I have never seen anything like it before - it makes Italy’s PonteVecchio look miniscule!

We had about an hour to walk around here. I thoroughly enjoyed looking in window after window of jewellery. John disappeared away up another street for a while looking at electrical goods.

Where we met the bus, we also found, by nose, the fish markets. We didn’t actually tour the fish markets, but I do wonder how they keep the fish refrigerated in a market setting in over 45 degree temperatures. I'm sure it is all done with precision, exactly as Dubai presents.