UAEDRL day 3

DAY 3 of our trip was spent with a morning on the beaches in Dubai, seeing the sharp contrast between public and private and what resort destination Dubai is. In the afternoon we travelled along the desert coast to Abu Dhabi, the largest city in the U.A.E. with 1.8 million inhabitants currently.



The Dubai beaches were stunning and the weather was beautiful at this time of year - i can't image it in the summer with scorching temps, but in mid-March, we managed to get lobster sunburns in just a few hours, soaking up the warmth that doesn't seem to ever hit Londontown! However, the public beach was not nearly as nice, however packed with many young guys having a fun afternoon singing or listening to music. I of course was a spectacle of much attention with my blonde hair, and overheard numerous times "California" muttered with shy smiles as i passed by!

After the beach, we drove to the new Marina district, and overwhelming (and impressive) undertaking of skyscraper construction along the coast south of the city center. It is a truly dense construction of towers, perhaps much more successful in terms of urbanism than the strip-row of Sheik Zayed Road. It would be interesting to see this place again in just a year or two as people are beginning to live there.
Then was a startling and disgusting drive out to one of the off-shore islands constructed as "Palms". Some of the pictures here demonstrate how "unspecial" it really is, in contrast to the image it advertises as such a luxurious place to live. However, it is clearly expensive and exclusive, as they wouldn't even let us drive out onto the "fronds" without a pass.

We spent the afternoon and evening in the capital city of Abu Dhabi, which is about an hour and a half south of Dubai, of course along the coast as well. This city is known as the richest city in the world and is home to the wealthiest of sheiks due to its oil-rich vast expanse of desert land it controls. Some people say they aren't even sure if Abu Dhabi will ever run out of oil, as they expect to discover even more. I am not sure this is a valid expectation, with oil running out everywhere, but in contrast to Dubai which expects to run out of oil by 2020, this city has atleast another 50 years of production capacity! eeee. And so they plant a lot of green grass - because they can. Yikes.

We went to the old fort and poked around at a relatilvely dead urban core city. Here also i experience more stares from the people than in Dubai. In the evening when we went to the Grand Mosque - an incredibly gorgeous construction - but i didn't even dare get out of the car, as i was not appropriately dressed and lacking a head-covering. But it was cute to turn and find some little girls giggling outside our van, as they were trying to touch my blond hair seen through the open window behind my seat. :) It was also really interesting to see the mass of people strolling into the large mosque, some dressed in complete robes, others wearing jeans and t-shirts.

We drove back to Dubai then and went out for food in the other "old" part of the city on the southside of the Dubai Creek, known as Bur Dubai. After searching for a cheap place listed in our guidebook for an hour or so, my teammates and I finally got a recommendation from a local guy of another place to go, and had a great meal at a very active streetside restaurant, at around 11pm, for approximately 3 pounds each, including drinks and dessert. Wow! It was pretty wierd too, when we arrived and asked if we could sit outside (since the weather was so nice) the host actually kicked out some other guys sitting having beverages at a table! We told him it was unnecessary and we had no problem waiting or sitting inside, but he insisted on shooing them off and gave us the seats. The street was very busy with guys hanging out, but i actually saw very little females. This is probably due to the fact that many of the young men have come from other countries, unable to bring their families along on their visas.

You can see a larger (higher quality) version of this slideshow at: http://picasaweb.google.com/lindsaycarol/UAE302