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 … Read more
Saturday, January 20, 2001 On Saturday we crossed the country to see the Gulf of Oman coast. Our first stop was at University City. This collection of English language universities was started from scratch and plopped into the middle of the desert outside Dubai city a couple of years ago. It might house 10,000 students. … Read more
Sunday, January 21, 2001 With Nathaniel at the wheel, we drove south to explore gold-plated Hotel Coast. The beaches just south of the main city are being rapidly (isn’t everything here rapid?) developed into super deluxe beach hotels. We stopped along the way to examine one of the centers where people keep the racing sailing … Read more
Monday, January 22, 2001 We left the city fairly early to make our way east and a bit south to the oasis town of Hatta for a four wheeling wadi adventure. We again transited the “scrub” desert; sand interrupted with tufts of brown, hardy grass, acacia trees and a few other shrubs. As we drove … Read more
Tuesday, January 23, 2001 Today, Nat and Michele promised, we’d get seriously into the souks. And we did. We started the day in Deira, the old side of Dubai, with the produce, fish and meat souk. Here, in the first huge section were stands selling all manner of produce. Like markets in the US, the … Read more
Wednesday, January 24, 2001 On our final day in Dubai we visited Sharjah a few of miles north of Dubai. Like Dubai, Sharjah is the name of both a city and of an emirate. More conservative than Dubai, it is the emirate that does the most to preserve the heritage of the region. Our focus … Read more