First day out and about in Bur Dubai
Trip Start
Feb 21, 2009
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2
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Trip End
Feb 26, 2009
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Sunday, February 22, 2009
We walked down the creek past the textile souk (which was yet to open at 10am)and then down to Sheikh Seed Al Maktoum house (one of the oldest restored houses in the area with a good collection of old photos of Dubai and Sheikhs and a collection of coins , which were Indan colonial coins until 1966) and the Heritage Village, which is said to have occasional traditional displays and some shops and cooking. We were told the place would come alive after 5pm since it was deserted in the morning, but when we returned later in the evening we found one person cooking, shut doors and a few shops - not worth taking time out and going to look at.
There still were not many people around at midday. We were going to walk under the underpass to Deira but that was closed for restoration and so we went to the only open creek side cafe for a drink (£3 or 15 Dhs for a cup of tea). It was lovely to just sit and relax in the sun especially after seeing so much snow 2 weeks ago in England.
We decided to take the half hour walk to Burjaman shopping centre, which could have been anywhere in the UK. Unfortunately the poor exchange rate meant that everything was relatively expensive in comparison to the UK.
A brief stop for at another shopping centre found us surrounded by cheap eating places , where we stopped for a small curry before heading to Dubai museum in the old fort.
The museum was about 50p/3Dhs to get in and was really well done. It was modern, with lots of air conditioning and videos about the history of Dubai, traditonal crafts, pearl diving, dhow building, trade and local lifestyle and shown in videos and sounds and lots of mannequins, which gave fun photographic opportunities.
The evening was a huge let down. We planned to put on our sunday best and go over to Jumeirah for a lovely meal. Instead we spent over 2 hours looking for a taxi and finding huge taxi queues everywhere, walking along the creek and into a couple of hotels to look for a beer , but after finding a glass of wine was 60dhs or £10 we just gave up and went back to the hotel hungry and tired
