Nova Dubai

We had our early breakfast - a buffet breakfast of Curry and parathas and toast and chai and went for a walk along the creek. We walked up to the Bastakia, which is an area that was built in the 1920s to look like traditional houses and has been lately restored. It only contains a couple of restaurants , coffee houses and museums including one about coins, but in general there is very little to see there -a few coach loads of visitors flock there the place the narrow streets seem a bit desert...

Today we had a really busy day. After our curry breakfast and cake! great way to start the day! we caught an abra (little boat) across the creek for a whole 2dhs/20p each to see the fish market, where there was an amazing selection of fish and lobster and huge prawns etc etc We then went for a walk around Deiras gold souk, spice souks etc. Deira is a lot quieter and more spaced out than the other side of the creek. The spice souk was a lot smaller than we expected with most of the little stal...

I know that we were not going to be abroad for long , but i knew that i had to get a few hours lazing on a beach while we were out there. We went to Jumeirah park (a 30 min taxi journey), which cost 5dhs to enter but inside was lovely peaceful park, childrens play area, cafes, toilets and changing room with showers. The sand was beautful golden sand with bright blue clear sea that was completely calm. Nearly all the people on the beach were "white" although some were very tanned! I enjoyed ha...

We were told there is a superb beach that has a semicircle of stones you can climb up to the top and sit and watch the waves and is a stunning place so we got a taxi to the open beach which ended up being an empty long stretch of beach with nothing like that described and was nowhere near the Burj Al Arab, which was what we expected and definately not a pretty beach as it had many rocks and a thin layer of sand. We took the opportunity, however to walk along the shore and look out to the pale...

Dubai was opulence at its best. First off, even on the flight over to Dubai taking Emirates was unreal. The airline is the best we've ever flown. Gourmet 4-course meals. Care packages. Spacious chairs and legroom that allow you to recline. The entertainment was fantastic as well as it came full with tons of movies to watch, TV shows, music, games, even cameras looking in front of the plane and directly below for a bird's eye view of what we were flying over. It was ridiculous and we're going ...