A day in Dubai

This place is the city of skyscrapers.

There are seriously a buttload of skyscrapers.
The city expands along one highway, called the Sheikh Zayed Road, with some random and organised expansion outwards, so it is just one long thin city.

First off, my dad and I caught a taxi to a spot along the river where we hopped on a ferry that went down the river about 200 hundred meters and then across. The ferry was just a piece of wood with an engine basically.
The market place was just beside the jetty we got off at so we went there, which was called Souk Dubai. I learned, firsthand, the meaning of "running the gauntlet." As you walk through the markets, the owner of every single shop walks up to you nagging the hell out of you to walk into their shop and buy stuff and they just don't give up! It was absolutely nuts.
There were bulk shops selling spices, gold, watches, clothes and jewelry.

From there we caught a taxi to the Metro train station.
From there we went to the Mall Of the Emirates. We bought Gold class tickets which is a comfortable little room at the front of the train, and the trains here are automated so the view was awesome. Behind the Gold class train cabin was the Women and Children only section, and behind that was just the normal.

The Mall Of the Emirates is just a bloody big shopping mall. It was like 5 stories high at least and covered huge area. The stuff there is so cheap. There is a ski slope section inside the shopping mall which is obviously full of snow, but I wasn't there long enough to go inside.

After the mall we caught a taxi to a place called Palm Jumeirah. the Palm Jumeirah is a giant man made island with a huge highway and monorail running down the middle. It is still under construction so there are large sections of just sand. The completed sections are fancy houses with heaps of greenery.

At the end was the Dubai aquarium, which was huge! It was called Atlantis and is fairly self explanatory but I loved it.

We hopped on the monorail from there and traveled down the Palm and the view was incredible. We then caught a taxi to a 7 Star hotel and had a look around. My god it was SO fancy. Walking in there made me feel like dirt.

After that we jumped on a train back to the hotel which is now where I sit, typing this blog. I am yet to go out for dinner and I'm not sure what we'll be having.
But, I must say that I'm really not a fan of 21 being the drinking age, sigh.

Tomorrow I travel to France. I'm looking forward to Paris very much!

On the plane to Dubai

"I am currently on the plane from Perth to Dubai. I have been sitting on this plane for 5 hours and still have 6 hours to go. It doesn't help that I have a killer throat and a throbbing headache that just won't go away. This plane flight has been constant turbulence with the seat belt sign going on and off, on and off...
The plane left at 6am Perth time and is scheduled to arrive at 5 pm Perth time, which is 1 pm Dubai time. So at least I get to travel through time to the past.
Oh and the weather report for Dubai states that it will be between 40 and 50 degrees C.
..
The plane is now experiencing some epic turbulence and I am feeling kind of sick and my hands are shaking. Is it too late to say that I'm not a good flier?
The pleasures of holidays, right?

*update*
It's now 12:30 Dubai time and the captain predicts 30 minutes until boarding so we are right on schedule. The temperature on the ground is 42 degrees Celsius. Gotta love the summer desert at midday. Nice and warm for sure."

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I am now sitting comfortably at the hotel in Dubai at local time, 2:37 pm. Perth time is 6:37 pm. Did someone just say jetlag?
I had about 4 hours sleep last night at the most and didn't sleep a wink on the plane.
But anyway, now to talk about this incredible city.

First off, it's a giant city in the middle of the desert. There is sand just, everywhere. As you would expect. But despite it's boring, plain, sandy, rocky, dusty, humid, boiling, smoked filled appearance, it really is quite beautiful.

The airport was absolutely massive. So ridiculous. I was walking for ages just to grab my suitcase.
I met dad outside the airport and we jumped in a taxi. The cars here are left hand drive so I sat in the front on the right hand side and it was weird!
Driving down the 6 lane highway, I got to have a good look at the city. It looks incredible.
There are huge skyscrapers that make Perth look like a babies sandcastle and then there are small hovels just around the corner that make me feel like I'm playing Battlefield.
The sky cannot be seen at all because of all the smoke. It's just constant haze.
And the humidity levels are so fricken high!

But enough of this sitting in a hotel room. It's time to explore!