I like, totally, go to the mall.
Trip Start
Nov 30, 2007
1
6
34
Trip End
Jan 17, 2008
Dubai,
United Arab Emirates
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
In the morning, I want to the Dubai Museum, which at first looks like a small old restored fort, with a handful of low-end exhibits (a few boats, some cannon and a Bedouin camp in the courtyard). Then you go through the last door, which takes you down a marble spiral walkway under the fort into a large, and well-done set of displays explaining every traditional aspect of Dubai culture, including a recreated old-style souk, a look at pearl diving, replica archaeological sites, and so on. Very cool.
After a few hours of random puttering about in the hot sun, I wound up at Wafi City, a mall built in a giant complex consisting largely of pyramids. (It's next to the under construction Dubai Healthcare City, which is a complex with about a dozen small hospitals.) I went inside to have a look. Now, those of you who know me know that I don't really always care for the over-the-top Christmas decoration in places ike malls. I thought that I'd be safe from that onn the other side of the world, particularly in a country with Arab in the name.
I was wrong. While nobody had explicit Christmas decorations up, three of the four malls I went to had "winter" decorations up consisting of Christmas trees, Santa Claus and so on. And snow, which makes as much sense here as if our malls decorated for spring with a sandstorm theme.
Watched over with paternal kindness.
Wafi City was the best; as I mentioned, it was a pyramid, so it had an understated (at times) Egyptian thing going on in the structure and decoration of the mall. Then on top of this was their "winter wonderland" theme, which they did featuring scenes from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (or, as they put it "The Lion, The Witch and Buy A New Wardrobe"). And, because of the National Holiday the day before, everywhere has UAE flags up, and in some cases creepy portraits of men I can only assume to be the Emirs of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Wafi City had flags appropriately displayed, as well. Which means, in one court of the mall, there were four themes going on simultaneously; Ancient Egypt, Narnia, Christmas and UAE National Day. I challenge you to imagine Market Mall done up with, say, Viking, Huckleberry Finn, Halloween and Canada Day themes simultaneously. Awesome.
From Wafi City, I departed on a double-decker bus tour through the New Dubai, having spent all my time before the mall going through Old Dubai. It was an excellent experience; the infrastructure they're building here is just ridiculous. Huge roadways with gigantic interchanges, so many new buildings. I mean, the Burj Dubai is impressive enough (holy cow, is it impressive), but then you realize they're simultaneously putting up maybe a dozen 30+ story skyscrapers next to it, and that there's a dozen more on the other side, most of them 10 years old or newer...,
Amongst the tour highlights was the Burj Al Arab.
The Dubai Museum. Not much from the outside.
Which is just as wonderful a piece of architecture in person as it is in pictures. Just absolutely stunning. So graceful, so pretty. Also on the tour were, well, more malls. I think that Dubai is Vegas, with shopping replacing gamblng. In addition to Wafi City (nicer than the Luxor), I stopped at Mercato (the Venetian's poor cousin) and Souk Madinat Jumeirah (the Sands, or the Aladdin or whatever.) The latter one was very well done, in a version of traditional Emiraiti architecture. But the real highhlight here was the view of the Burj Al Arab, which I got to see through sunset. Wonderful.My final stop of the day was Mall Of The Emirates, which is just ridiculous. Imagine a classy version of West Edmonton Mall, with all high-end fixtures and stores; something like that (I think it's a little bigger). Ski Dubai, of course, which was pretty cool - Sunshine Village may not have anything to worry about, but COP does. I wound up idling here over in the restaurant court; they have a giant area like a food court, but with sit down restaaurants representing around a dozen cuisines, including Chili's. I went with the Chinese place because it had a Ski Dubai and comfortabe chairs. The food was okay, too.
It's really neat to see the size and scale of what they're putting together out here. Just a phenomenal rate of construction. I saw the metro, which starts in March, and has further lines under construction. (They've also started putting in air conditioned bus shelters.) I don't know if this city makes any environmental sense in any way, but it's awesome to see nonetheless.
