The Emirates Osaka->London flights gave us the choice of stopping off for 5
hours in Dubai airport or else having the best part of a day (land early
morning, take off again 2am); so we'd decided have a whole day's layover in
Dubai and booked an airport hotel (turns out there's a Premier Inn of
all things, complete with airport shuttle bus).
After landing with the dawn (28° at 5am!) and dropping off some bags at the P.I.,
we headed into the city, safe in the knowledge that we had as much of the day as we liked to look around and then could grab a few hours' shut-eye once we started to flag after a few hot hours of pounding the pavements.
After landing with the dawn (28° at 5am!) and dropping off some bags at the P.I.,
we headed into the city, safe in the knowledge that we had as much of the day as we liked to look around and then could grab a few hours' shut-eye once we started to flag after a few hot hours of pounding the pavements.
The Jumeirah Grand Mosque (apparently the most photographed on Dubai)
is open to non-Muslims as part of a "Open doors, open minds" programme. As well as information about the building and about Dubai itself, it involves an interesting talk about Islamby a woman volunteer.
As well as a basic explanation of the theory and practice of the faith which felt rather like being back in the schoolroom, she took no-holds-barred questions about dress, deportment, expectations of women (interestingly, although she herself was conventionally dressed, she claimed that her teenaged daughter chooses not to cover her hair or wear the traditional black cloak - "abaya").
As a huge plus, a feast of tea and buns, in the form of mini doughnuts with date syrup, and pancakes with curd cheese was served in a waiting room...
We dragged ourselves away from the buns and headed to the modestly-sized metro
to the 829.8m Burj Khalifa, which took over from Taipei 101 in 2009 as the tallest building in the world.
Sadly, our optimism
proved ill founded as the receptionist brightly told us that access to the
observation deck tickets (AED125/£24pp) was sold out but we could go to
the top for AED500 each... that's a grand total of £187! Not so tempting, especially as it was a
fairly hazy day; we declined and moved on to glimpse the Burj al Arab hotel
from the tube (emphasising how bad the visibility probably was from the tower),
and visited the Deira area of old Dubai and its fort
and following up those donuts with a slap up late-afternoon spread of mutabal and hummus, and chicken wraps.
Everything in Dubai seems enormously spread out (just
walking to the Burj Khalifa from the tube which bears its name took 20
minutes - on a moving walkway too!) and, as you'd expect, primary focus
on shopping and consumption. I will say for it that it has a pleasing
range of interesting modern architecture
but we weren't surprised that a
little over 12 hours in town proved more than enough and the shopping malls - glityzy as they are - were not for us
we were glad
to see the Premier Inn shuttle bus for a shower and 5 hours' snooze
before the homeward leg. Into LHR at dawn on Thursday morning.
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