Dubai in Photos

Wow, time really does fly when traveling! Since our last post about Portland, we have traveled to Seattle for three days, Dubai for four days, Seoul for six days and we just arrived in Taipei, where we will stay for seven days. We have a boat load of posts coming up, so stay tuned. We quickly realized that it is near to impossible to see a city for a limited amount of time, visit with friends and keep up with the blog. As our itinerary slows down and we rent an apartment in Thailand, things should get on track.

Our first international destination was Dubai, a bizarre city in the middle of a desert. We went to Dubai because Aurelien has always wanted to visit. He had read about for years, he loves engineering and tall buildings, so it seemed like the place for him to check out. He is going to write up a post about his reactions to Dubai, so I won’t go into much detail but I wanted to share some photos and let you all know that we are still safe and sound!

Dubai was much bigger than we had expected, the buildings stretched out for kilometers with all of the buildings running along the main highway. The city is filled with tall skyscrapers, some seemingly empty, or half full. Many were still under construction, some actively being built and some just sitting there. We explored the Marina the first day and quickly realized that the heat was stifling, maybe we were wimps after the cold Seattle weather, but wow, it was hot and humid. After realizing how cheap taxis were things became more comfortable. We stopped trying to explore the massive city by just the metro and foot, and added in taxis. I cannot tell you how luxurious it was to go from the metro to an air conditioned taxi to our final destination and then the fee would only be $4!

Some highlights: we saw the indoor ski slope, the tallest building in the world and the indoor aquarium. It was almost like little kids ran around the desert and came up with all of the most fantastical things they could come up with and their parents, billionaires, threw down tons of money to grant them their wishes, and possibly up their neighbors accomplishments. Nature be damned, they created whatever they wanted.

This is a view from the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the word. Here you can see just a fraction of the sky scrapers in Dubai. You can see the main highway that runs though the center of the buildings.

We spent a lot of time walking in these indoor walkways connecting the metro to the malls or buildings. Thank you AC.

Here is the futuristic metro, we loved how it was above ground so we could see the city. The metro was clean and efficient.

One morning we explored the spice market and bought some fruit and nuts.

Saffron and the spice man.

Chilling, or should I say, sweating in the Marina. Many expats live in the Marina.

More to come soon!