Dubai

Granted this isn’t my first time visiting Dubai. However, I’m still very much a tourist. Every time the city comes into sight I’m still caught with my mouth just a little bit agape. I mean the buildings all seem to be covered in layers of gold, marble or mirrors that glitter away in the sun and give you little white spots on your vision. Add this to the exotic looking cars that everyone seems to own and jewellery that adorns every person you see, and you begin to feel very poor.

The thing is though, I’ve seen it all before. The tallest buildings, the large expanse of desert, the big cars… it all seems a little extravagant but lacking something…? Difficult to explain. It’s as though everyone is trying to prove something by draping their money over their belongings…

So instead of spending another few hours staring at someone else’s visual interpretation of their bank balance (I’m not jealous at all…!) I jumped on a hop on hop off bus that took me round the more traditional areas of Dubai.

I started off at the Dubai Mall – not really interested in shopping but it was Stop 1 and had to start somewhere… but quickly jumped back on and jumped back off at Stop 5 – The Dubai Museum. This really was gonna be a fast tour since I didn’t have long… but this place was built within an old desert fort… pretty cool really… Here’s a pic… Its def worth a walk around and you get free entrance with the hop on bus…

I’d had enough of the bus for now so started walking… It wasn’t long before I came to the Old Souk which was made up almost entirely of cloth.

Pretty much any kind of clothing material you can imagine, and a lot more besides… Endless streets of the stuff… Forget the high street in Leicester… This is some quality stuff…

So off I tootled to the next part of this area… which was the Spice Souk.

This area was partly made up of a long corridor with shops like this packed along both sides. Holland and Barrett wouldn’t have stood a chance. The smells of the incense being burned as you walked along was incredible…

Of course, this was still Dubai and no part of Dubai would be complete without…

… Yep… a Gold Souk… This was yet again another corridor packed full of shops which sold gold in every form you could imagine. This stretched out beyond this section though into several more of the surrounding streets. I particularly liked the way they displayed their goods so perfectly…

Just get it all hung up in the window. Doesn’t matter how pretty it looks, just hang it up.

Everything.

As much I would have liked to spend time haggling for a good price on some lovely gold chain, I had to end my day on a double decker bus heading back to the ship.