Today we picked up a Dubai Lonely Planet and took to the streets on their recommended city walk. We started in the lovely old area of town and had a nice lunch at the Basta Art Cafe. Following the river North, we walked through the old market and past the Grand Mosque. Further round we went to a small cultural village that was a pretty peice of architecture adorned with wind towers.
We then headed into the Spice Souk where Laura had a great time sniffing through all the herbs and spices and coming away with a big bag of goodies to bring home. Bouyed by this we head on to the famous gold souk to see if we could back some bargain wedding rings for 2010…
The Gold Souk is a huge covered area filled with hundreds of small shops with no realy way to tell them apart. We headed into one to enquire about simple platinum bands and eventually described what we wanted and then became a long and awful haggling process that did eventually get to a good price. We walked away very happy, ready to collect our rings in a couple of days…
This evening we decided to dine in the Dubai Marina area, another long taxi ride from our hotel. This taxi journey was actually fairly nerve wracking, and demonstrated why Dubai is known for it’s atrocious driving conditions. The taxi sped along through traffic, weaving between lanes to the constant warning of ‘You are exceeding the speed limit, slow down’ from the taxi GPS. With every idiot on the road driving aggressively, there were a few near misses and on arrival at the marina I wished we could do more than refuse to tip!
The marina itself is nice enough – a newly constructed (where in Dubai isn’t?) leisure area with numerous restaurants. We went to a highly recommended Lebanase spot (I forget the name) which was pretty much a resounding disappointment – bland and overpriced food. Still, it was nice to sit outside and relax with a drink.
