Dubai part 1: Souks!

From Africa to the Middle East! Jeff had a business trip to Dubai and since school is out for the summer he asked us if we wanted to tag along and hotel crash. We gave him a resounding "YES!!!" Our friends the Smith family now live in Dubai. Of course you all remember Zoe, Julian, Em and Jamie from Korea. And there is a new little Smith on the way!
We spent a great first day in Dubai with the Smiths and got to see their neighborhood, shops ect. Dubai is over the top gorgeous, shiny and swanky. Like a chocolate Disney cupcake with triple frosting dipped in gold leaf with a cherry on top swanky. They are obsessed with having the biggest and the best of everything. Building the "World's Biggest" seems to be their national past-time. We got to see the Burj Kalifa, the world's tallest building. It doesn't look all that tall until you are miles away and realize that it is about 3x higher than the sky scrapers all around it!
On Friday the kids and I decided to go check out the oldest part of Dubai. We took the metro to a section of the city that had been restored to the way it looked traditionally.
We stopped for lunch in a great little open-air restaurant. There is a drink you can get all over Dubai that is kind of their signature drink. It's like a lemonade with frothy mint and it tastes out of this world. I am usually a water girl as I try not to drink my calories, but this was sooo good I must have had 10 of them while I was there. Sooo worth it!
Exploring the old section. Lots of cool buildings and little alleyways. Back in the day all the buildings had those towers that you can see behind the kids. This was for cooling purposes. AS IF that would have helped! We were there in winter and it was plenty warm. In the summer it frequently gets into the 120's. Yikes!
We started exploring some shops with all kinds of stuff in them. It smelled pretty darn good in the old section. Like a combination of cinnamon, sandalwood and incense.
We went through the Dubai museum and it was in an old fort with all kinds of huge displays and dioramas.
First stop: Weapons! We're really into weapons right now....
After the museum we headed toward the textile souk. A souk is a market. In Dubai instead of having markets that are like a mash-up of everything, the traditional markets are pretty specific to one kind of thing. So there's a gold souk, perfume souk, spice souk, ect. The textile souk sells table cloths, pashmina, shoes, and all kinds of clothing.
In the textile souk Sasha fell in love with a beaded hat and a pair of shoes and I liked a pair of sandals and an embroidered shirt. You have to haggle big-time in the old souks and I was ready to go. I told the guy that I would come up with my number for the 4 things and he could give me his. We were off from each other by 700 Dirhams! So game on baby.... 30 minutes later I had walked out twice, he was wringing his hands, and we FINALLY had a deal. The kids were like "WHAT just happened?!?". But it was all good fun and I told him that he was just lucky that it was me and not my Mom....
I got the kids a snow-cone because they were so good and patient during "hagglegate 2012". There is a bridge across the river but most people still cross on these old boats. Back in the day it was the only way across the river. So we jumped on board.
Lots of ladies in Burka. Some have their faces out, but many are totally covered up. We even saw women in swimming burka. What a drag that would be eh?
Boats crossing the river:
An old Mosque:
On the other side of the river we headed to the spice souk. It smelled AMAZING!! We had a lot of fun exploring with our noses. There were spices ground up and many spices sold in their natural form so it was cool to see something, not know what it was and then give it a sniff and yell "Hey, I know what this is!". There were also a lot of new smells, many of which made me wish I was a middle eastern cook just so I would know how to use them.
This guy asked us if we knew what this was:
It looked like a combination of glass shards, rock candy and fiberglass. Then he fired up a little brazier and put one of the crystals on it. It melted like a piece of ice and sent up a thick, perfectly white smoke. He showed us how to walk through it and breathe. It was medicinal eucalyptus and it totally cleaned out your entire head!
So much to take in!
The many twisting alleys of the spice souk:
Sasha smells different kinds of aromatics:
Next it was onto the Gold souk. Sooo much flash and glitter! We didn't make any purchases here and this is one souk where there's no haggling. The price of gold is set!
Sorry Sash, you picked out your souvenir in the textile souk. Should have waited....
Finally, we headed back to the beautiful, immaculate metro to ride back to our hotel. We had walked many miles and were very glad to be getting a train ride home!

Next, the Desert, Dunes, and a Camel trampling......

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Location:Dubai