Adventures in Dubai

Dubai is an interesting place. Like William said, seven hours was plenty for us, but I’m glad we got to take a quick peek. It seems to be a place of extremes: extreme heat (111F the day we were there); extreme height (the Burj Khalifa being the tallest building in the world…until 2020); extreme luxury (the only 7 star hotel in the world–the Burj Al-Arab); extreme shopping (the Dubai Mall is among the largest in the world); extreme silliness (….indoor skiing???!).

Dubai feels very unfinished; there are half-completed buildings everywhere which, according to our two taxi drivers, will be finished by Expo 2020. They had better hustle because as of now it is just a bunch of cranes and buildings without walls.

My main interests were seeing the Burj Khalifa; relaxing and wandering around the Dubai Mall (since it was next to the Burj Khalifa and would have good food options); and, time-permitting, driving by the Burj Al-Arab (the 7* hotel that looks like the sail of a ship).

After taking a quick look at the Burj Khalifa (it was SO HOT!), having a great breakfast, and exploring the mall for a bit, we got into a taxi with 40 minutes left before wanting to arrive back at the airport. I asked the driver whether the Burj Al-Arab was on the way to the airport or if it would take longer than the time we had available. Of course he said something like “it is okay” (what does that mean?) so after a few attempts at clarifying, I decided to go for it and just hope for the best.

I am very direction-impaired so didn’t catch on that we went in the opposite direction of the airport until after we saw the Burj Al-Arab (~20 minutes each way) and were back to our starting point. At this point, it was 12p.m. which was the time I wanted to be at the airport but we still had 25 minutes of driving left to go.

Then I found out that our taxi driver’s credit card machine wasn’t working so we had to stop and get cash. By this point, I had spent a fair amount of time (one hour?) talking with our taxi driver, a nice young man, newly married with a baby on the way. I decided quickly that he wasn’t going to steal my children who were sleeping in the backseat and I ran into the convenience store on my own to visit the ATM. (Usually it takes me longer than one hour to determine someone isn’t a kidnapper but I had high hopes for this guy. 🙂 )

Inside the convenience store, I struggled with the ATM and finally was able to withdraw 300 dirham, which was about twice as much as I needed. Anyone going to the United Arab Emirates anytime soon? I’ll sell you some dirham!

We arrived at the airport with about 100 minutes until our departure time but still needed to get our bags from the “left luggage” office, go through security, and find our gate. There were other people in line waiting to pick up their bags, but after a minute of stressing over the slow speed of the line, we expressed urgency and managed to get our bags within 10-15 minutes (which felt like forever).

We went through security (such a process!) and needed to figure out where our gate was. It turned out we arrived in (and left our luggage in) Terminal 2, but we needed to get to Terminal 3… which was about 40 minutes by VERY SLOW SHUTTLE BUS. This airport was HUGE! I was starting to feel certain we were going to miss our flight to Tanzania.

But, by God’s grace, we got to the gate before the plane had left! Somehow we managed to need to go through security three, maybe four times during this process of finding our way to where we needed to go in the Dubai Airport. During our final time through security, a male security worker with a strong personality decided that for everyone’s safety(??) he needed to deflate the soccer ball we had been carrying with us (for six flights!) since Iceland (we had it for the boys to play with and eventually donate to someone in Africa). aggghhh. I had talked other security workers out of deflating the ball but could tell I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this guy. So, defeated, we watched him let out the air and took a deflated soccer ball to Africa. 🙁 Side note: Tate does a great impression of this guy; he did look WAY too joyful. (We found a nice guy to inflate it for us in Africa, but it was so frustrating that it was our very last time going through security that it was deflated…we had almost made it!)

In the end… I am glad we visited Dubai but probably wouldn’t visit the Burj Al-Arab again just to see this view and get this picture. You can’t even tell it’s supposed to look like a sail!