Dubai: Day One

Oh. My. God.

It is now a little after nine in the evening on Monday in Dubai, and we've been here for a full day now. Words cannot do this place justice. I had heard that this would be like a Middle Eastern Las Vegas, but I've been to Vegas and this is nicer.

We got in late last night, after a nutty day Saturday of running around Queens in NYC. Of my parents' three suitcases, one of them came up on their flight to JFK, one of them came up on a later flight to JFK, and one of them inexplicably ended up at LaGuardia. But once we got everything under control, we got on our Emirates Air flight (which was awesome even if it was really long) and arrived here on Sunday night.

I couldn't get many pictures last night because it's very hazy here (whether from the desert or pollution I'm not sure), but I was definitely on my best American Tourist behavior today.

First, our hotel, the Burj Al Arab:



I couldn't get a picture of it from the side, but it looks like a sail. That round thing at the top is a helipad, and they once converted it into a tennis court where Roger Federer and Andre Agassi played a match. There's also a group of islands near the hotel that are shaped like a giant palm tree. We're supposed to be able to see it from our room but I don't think we're up high enough.

Inside the Burj Al Arab--the view from the bottom up:



The fountain in the lobby:



Me in front of the fountain:



Jumeirah Beach next door:



A Rolls-Royce parked outside the hotel:



The Dubai Museum inside an old fort:



Jumeirah Mosque (we couldn't go in because they only let non-Muslims in for tours at certain times, we're going to try and go back tomorrow)



After touring, we went to the Mall of the Emirates, which is their biggest mall (as of now--like so many other things, they're building a bigger one). They had every high-street store that I had shopped at in London, which made me inexplicably happy. But this is the Mall of the Emirates' biggest draw:



There is a ski slope in the mall. I repeat: THERE IS A SKI SLOPE IN THE MALL.



We didn't actually go skiing (we tried that as a family once, it didn't quite work out). But this was something magnificent to see.

You try to remind yourself about the environmental damage and the human rights violations. But it's impossible not to admire everything this city has accomplished. It was all the vision of one sheikh who decided that they couldn't just rely on oil for their economy, and would have to branch out into other fields like tourism and finance. And they'll be better off for it in the long term.

On the agenda for tomorrow, if we can finally adjust to the time difference--going back to the Jumeirah Mosque and visiting the gold and spice souqs.

Salaam y'all!