Tom's Travel Blog

In mid-January we visited Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for a few days, as a winter break. We’ve both been there before: we went together nearly two years ago to visit Expo 2020 (which was postponed a year because of Covid), and I’ve been several times previously, in the context of breaks on the way to or on return from holidays in SE Asia. We booked a breakfast-time flight out of Manchester and stayed at a Premier Inn near the airport the night before. That necessitated a very early start, and scraping ice off the car windscreen at 5:30 on the coldest morning of the winter was not fun. But we got going after a few minutes, got the car parked, dropped our bag, and then waited for the flight.

On our last visit we stayed at a (formerly) grand hotel, the Grand Hyatt, but this time we stayed at a Holiday Inn. This was at Festival City, a district not far from the airport and a bit away from all the regular tourist areas. The hotel was attached to a shopping mall (Festival City Mall) which in turned backed onto Dubai Creek at Festival City Bay – there’s a theme emerging here, you’ll have noticed. This mall is much more of a ‘locals’ destination than a tourist hot-spot – for example it included a huge supermarket and an IKEA, plus (in addition to fashion shops) a number of other ‘practical’ stores, e.g.  home furnishing shops. There were also a number of restaurants.

Of course, referring to ‘locals’ in Dubai actually means ‘local residents’ rather than actual Emirati citizens. This is because just over 80% of the population of Dubai are expatriates – non-Emiratis – who have moved there for work, and they have come from many different parts of the world. One result of this was the Festival City mall was thronged with people of all ethnicities and cultures, which made it an interesting place to walk around. Very alive and vibrant, and we both enjoyed it.

We were there for four full days. On the first day we just found our way around. We generally prefer to use public transport when we visit places but our hotel was not positioned on either the Dubai Matro or a helpful bus route. I had read, however, that there was a ferry across the creek from Festival Bay to a point on the other side that was within easy walking distance of a Metro station so we needed to confirm that. And indeed we found that using the ferry was easy and cheap, and the Metro station was  just a five-minute walk away on the opposite bank. So we spent the day working all of this stuff out, adding money to our Nol cards (Dubai’s equivalent of an Oyster card), visiting Dubai Mall (where we spent a happy hour in Kinokuniya, the biggest bookstore in SE Asia) and just generally settling in.

 

On the second day we visited Expo City, the site of the former Expo 2020. I’d read that this was being developed into a new residential area, and that there were already new things there. Not so, it turned out. The site was just about deserted (certainly when we arrived mid-morning), apart from the army of staff who were almost fighting over us. We visited two of the main pavilions from the Expo, and in some ways had a better time than we had two years ago. The pavilions were interesting and dramatic, and with no crowds (indeed, hardly any other visitors at all) we were able to take our time over them.

Day three saw us explore Old Dubai and the creek. This didn’t start well – we took the Metro to a point on the creek from where I’d thought there was a creek-side walk, but it turned to be mainly a busy road-side walk. Never mind – we pressed on and came to the central Abra (ferry) station, from where many traditional ferries were crossing the creek, to various destinations along it. We just took a simple crossing to the Al Seef area which we explored. Then after lunch we walked back through the Souk. I’ve got some old pictures of the souk from the 1950s and 60s, and in those days it was the local market, but today it’s just a tourist attraction. I can’t work out how these stalls make any money: there was no-one there hardly, the stalls were not doing any business, and they all seemed to sell the same stuff, most of which was – not good! Stuffed camels were a staple, as were plastic models of the Burj Khalifa. And I’m pretty sure that none of it actually came from Dubai.

 

Finally, on day four we ventured to Sharjah Emirate, to visit some museums. This is the next emirate north, and in fact adjoins Dubai old town – Dubai, Sharjah city and Ajman together make up what is in fact one continuous city. We went on the bus, and on this occasion this was probably a mistake. We’d investigated the bus station in Dubai the previous day – it was near the souk – and it was modern and well-organised, with up-to-date public information systems and helpful customer service people. When we eventually got to Sharjah we found that the bus station there was just a concrete space alongside a very busy main road, from which it was quite difficult to get away on foot. So we took a taxi to the Heritage Museum, and were non-plussed by the fact that the taxi driver had never heard of it! But we got there eventually, and had perhaps the best 90 minutes of the trip – lots of information and displays about life and culture in old Sharjah, and all displayed in a traditional house. What’s most extraordinary about this is that ‘old Sharjah’ means the 1960s – the changes have all been that recent.

Unfortunately our decision to use the bus that day meant that by the time we’d finished we didn’t have time to locate and visit another museum, of which there are a number in Sharjah. (That Emirate seems to have specialised in museums; Abu Dhabi does theme parks, it seems, while Dubai is all about shopping and incredible architecture.) So we decided to walk back to the bus station, and on  our way there fell into a small restaurant where we had one of the best chicken birianis ever. Thank you, Spice Bazar in Sharjah – you made our day.

And we finished off the day with another (small) meal plus wine in the hotel bar. We’d visited there on previous evenings, mainly to have a pre-dinner drink. The UAE is a muslim country so access to alcohol is restricted, of course. The solution that Dubai has adopted is to make alcohol available in ‘private places within private places’ – e.g., a hotel bar. None of the restaurants in the mall served alcohol – the mall itself wouldn’t be regarded as a private place so the restaurants would at best be regarded as ‘private places off a public place’. (Sharjah, which as a separate Emirate has its own laws, has banned alcohol completely.)

Then it was back home on an early afternoon flight from Dubai International which landed at Manchester in the early evening. We’d decided that we’d be too tired to drive home that evening so we had another night in the Premier Inn near the airport before an easy drive through the Peak District the following morning to a very cold but otherwise untouched house.

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