First few days in Dubai

I have been in Dubai for three days now and so far it has been nothing like I expected and exactly as I expected:

Coming into the man-made
Dubai marina by ferry

The buildings are big!  So very big and there are so many of them.  The city stretches on for kilometres along the coastline and skyscrapers tower along the water from end to end.

Construction is everywhere and the recent slump in oil prices does not appear to affect it much.  Or perhaps it has and this is what a slump looks like.  The city of Dubai, apart from the historic district, did not exist 20 years ago.

The people are wonderfully friendly and helpful.  English is spoken by everyone I have encountered and all signs are in both Arabic and English.  That has made travelling fairly easy.  I have been asked daily about travelling alone but everyone has been more curious than anything.  It has not been as bad as I had expected.

Gold Souk

ATM machines that dispense gold bars do exist and there are a number of them around the city that I have seen.

It's a hard city to get around without a car.  I supposed a city built around the oil industry would be set up to drive around, walking is hard as everything is spread out and sidewalks are not very common.

People in Dubai do not pay income tax nor is there a value added tax on goods, this was put in place to attract people to work here.

It rains here a lot....well not really but it did yesterday.  All day and the day before had on and off  showers, so much for coming to the desert to get away from rainy Ontario.   Next week is looking better.

Burj Al Arab in the clouds 

Tim Hortons has locations all across the city, feels like home with a coffee shop on every corner.  I can now rest easy that I know what Tim Horton's looks like in Arabic.

Everything strives to be bigger and better but there is very little original architecture.

I found a coffee museum today, all else is irrelevant.