With jewellery so Bollywood (for want of a better description) it was worth a separate post!! Touting wasn’t so obvious as in the Spice Souk, but business was definitely being done!
Photos are all through shop windows – a bit of glare but yes, the gold really was this yellow!
So here are a few highlights from our tour yesterday – going clockwise – Burj Al Arab from the beach, Jumeriah Mosque, Jabeel Palace gate, Dubai Museum – dhow and original house; the tower in the background was apparently part of the original city walls; a fully loaded abra crossing Dubai Creek and some of the produce at the Spice Souk.
Got here…just. The incoming plane for our flight out of Wellington was late – 4 hours late! So it was a long wait at the airport and then a tense flight to see if we would make the flight from Melbourne to Dubai which was scheduled to leave about the time we were due to arrive. Fortunately it would seem there were enough transferring passengers for Qantas to hold the plane so all was well in the end. Did make us realise that the extra flight across the Tasman at the start and end of a trip is going to add a degree of complexity to international trips we hadn’t banked on.
Anyhoo… here we are in Dubai! We arrived Monday morning here and after trying to keep going to adjust our body clocks we fell in a bit of a heap Monday afternoon. So all we managed to do was explore the large shopping mall adjacent to the hotel and then check out the outdoor pool and bar area – pleasant at night when it’s 30C and blistering hot during the day when its 37C.
Yesterday was a big sightseeing day – a city tour for the morning and then late afternoon a metro ride across the city to go up the world’s tallest building – Burj Khalifa.
Dubai is both very western (big, shiny skyscrapers, huge malls, lots of traffic but big roads (makes NZ State Highway 1 look like a side street!) but also traditional. Many men and women wear traditional dress (with many variations), and it certainly helps to be sensitive to different cultural norms.
We enjoyed the city tour very much as it helped us appreciate the size of the city (it has multiple different commercial and tourist-centred areas) and how spread out the tourist sights are – and as we experienced during our visit to Kuala Lumpur to visit John’s family – you really can’t walk to anything – taxis or tours for tourists, although the mall adjacent to the hotel has a metro stop so we experienced Dubai at rush hour last night!
As with all tourist-oriented city tours you never get as long somewhere as you might like but we did get photo stops for Burj Al Arab, the Jumeriah Mosque, the Zabeel Palace, a quick visit to the Dubai Museum (very small), take an abra across Dubai Creek (the Dubai version of the public traghetti in Venice), and visit the spice and gold souks (you are so obviously as tourist that you are an instant target for touts but interesting nonetheless and some of the gold jewellery is incredible).
Late in the afternoon we headed via the metro to Burj Khalifa – which is attached to Dubai Mall – the world’s biggest (there are lots of surperlatives used to describe various things in Dubai but 1200 shops is pretty big!). While it wasn’t a crystal clear day, the view from the observation area (a bit below the top) was amazing – and makes clear the sheer amount of construction going on here, some of which is related to developing new hotels and facilities for World Expo 2020. No planning or resource consent issues here: what the ruler says, goes!
Some pics to follow…
I’m dusting off the blog for our imminent trip – a brief stop in Dubai, two weeks walking in northern Sicily, a second vist to Milan, two weeks on a tour in Portugal from Lisbon to Porto, a visit to my family in Scotland and my first visit to Amsterdam (John’s last visit was when he qualified for Contiki tours!)
It’s been busy here – we had visits from four different sets of friends/family during March, and unfortunately the Wellington summer and autumn wasn’t anywhere near as good as last year. Having visitors though did mean we did a bit of being tourists in our home town so we could provide advice on various attractions like Zealandia Ecosanctuary and the Weta Cave (for movie fans – Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor of Lord of the Rings fame have their various ventures based in Wellington).
Despite the weather I have been out and about with my camera, with Zealandia offering good opportunities for getting close to native birds.
So, a few pics to follow.
In Brisbane before going to Heron Island I bought a new photography toy – a teleconverter for my telephoto lens that has the effect of extending its length. So that meant bird and turtle photos without scaring either.
As there are quite a few photos I thought I’d break them up between a few posts. so firstly – Herons! Actually, they are really Eastern Egrets…but close enough!
We got back last Thursday from a trip to Brisbane and Heron Island. It was great to catch up with family, friends, and former work colleagues. We also got to meet the newest addition to the O’Connell family, Oscar, born to John’s nephew Ben and his partner Millie, earlier this year.
We’d booked the package to Heron while we were still in Brisbane thinking we might get to go before we moved to NZ, but it didn’t work that way, so it was a good reason to come back and soak up some Queensland warmth after a cold and blustery Wellington spring.
Heron Island is at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, a two hour catermaran trip from Gladstone. We had five days of great weather, and while the resort has seen better days, the vibe is relaxed and there are various nature themed activites. So we snorkelled – off the beach and further out in the reef from a dive boat, watched the huge amount of bird life, went looking for and found turtles, and generally chilled. And it was an enforced digital detox – the wifi on offer is expensive and not good. Five days without the US election!
Photography opportunities on Heron were great, so, of course, so pictures will follow!
As promised a few pics…
Where did September go? In my last post I said that spring was close to springing – and almost as soon as it did we got grey skies, wind and rain. Added to that John had to have a skin cancer removed from his leg which was of a sufficient size to need a skin graft – so before hand he was sore, and after he’s been very stoic about his recovery keeping him housebound for 2 weeks. His recovery has been going well, but he’s looking forward to getting back to normal. And so am I!
So between the inclement weather, university commitments and recuperating there’s not been very much venturing out in our household. I’ve enjoyed the university course so much I am thinking about going back as a real student to do a graduate diploma in italian – but as we have a trip planned in the first half of next year, it wouldn’t be until second semester and very definitely part time.
So, coming up is our trip to Brisbane – we booked 5 nights on Heron Island before we moved here, so it’s a chance to do that and catch up with friends and family in Brisbane as well. And it will be warm!!
A few spring in Wellington pics to follow….
mywalkingbootsarered 