Friday, January 19, 2001
This morning we took a walk in Creekside Park. This beautifully manicured park is situated along another section of Dubai Creek. It has excellent views of the surrounding city, including the docks where the small wooden coastal freighters tie up and the Dubai Creek Yacht and Golf Club with its avant-garde (there’s a lot of avant-garde architecture here) golf club house. Interestingly, this park and most other nice public parks charge a nominal admission. We could only guess that it was to keep the really low income people out. Also interesting was the amount of litter. We’ve seen a lot of it, not only in the parks. Most people, not just nationals, simply discard things on the streets, walks or lawns rather than place it in the omnipresent trash receptacles. They then employ other people to pick it up. Odd.
We then crossed the creek for lunch at the yacht club. It is a beautiful facility with an excellent, mostly western-style restaurant. Most of it is outdoors with a large, multi-level deck. Bill ordered the Big Boy cheeseburger to the obvious delight of the waiters who grinned widely and made a joke about it. “Big boy orders a Big Boy sandwich!” They are very up front with stuff like that, meaning no disrespect.
That evening it was off to one of the nicest new malls. This glitzy venue has four levels and is a favorite of local Emirates. Shopping is big-time entertainment here and they were out in force, shopping with a vengeance. Wide eyed, we explored many of the stores. There are few malls in the US. outside of Beverly Hills and Palm Beach, that can match this one. All the high priced, international retailers are here. The jewelry and clothing selection is unbelievable with US$900 toddlers party dresses and women’s US$3,000 designer dresses. The latter might be worn under the traditional abayas when in public. To top off the day, we pigged out at the Baskin and Robbins on the top floor!