Once we landed, getting out of the airport and to our hotel was surprisingly a breeze. It was about 7:30pm and the city was so lit up! The height of all the buildings was impressive, Dubai is such an exciting place and we were looking forward to the next few days of adventure! After checking into the Shangri-la Dubai (our room was all the way up on the 32^nd floor with a view of the Persian Gulf!) we went to get a quick a bite. There was a Chinese restaurant, Shang Palace, in our hotel which looked fantastic so we decided to have a light dinner there. Since the UAE is Muslim, one thing to note is alcohol is allowed to be served only in hotels. This means that all of the hotels have plenty of restaurants and nightclubs!! The second thing we quickly found out was that pork was generally not served. This made me very happy since we picked a Chinese restaurant, meaning all the shrimp dumplings were safe for me!! (since I don’t eat pork, poultry, or beef) Living in San Francisco, a city with the most restaurants per capita (higher even than NYC) with cuisines from all over the world, it can be hard to impress us when dinner time comes around. This, however, was seriously some of the best Chinese I think I have had, and I’m not even much of a Chinese food eater. Now I know why people go gaga for dumplings.

We rose Thursday morning ready to tackle the day and see as much of Dubai as we could. Before we arrived, I had set up a 5-hour driving tour that I found through TripAdvisor with OceanAir travel. They picked us up promptly at 9:00am and we were off! A family of 3 from Pisa, Italy joined us, along with another woman and her mother from Switzerland. Our guide, Adel, came from Egypt and informed us that there is a large Egyptian population in Dubai because much of the tourism in Egypt has evaporated due to the current situation and has moved to Dubai where tourism continues to grow every day. He was a great guide with lots of interesting facts and stories about the UAE. I found it fascinating to learn that the main industry in Dubai was originally pearl fishing. However, once the Japanese were able to manufacture artificial pearls, that business became less profitable for Dubai. Fast forward to the 1950s when oil was discovered, which lead to great wealth for the country. To prevent another economic downturn as the supply of oil would eventually run out, it was decided to invest in creating a significant tourism industry so that people would always have a reason to visit the country. How to do this? Make everything bigger and better than anything and anywhere else so that they would be the best… in the world. We next stopped off at the Atlantis resort  which has an aquarium filled with over 65,000 fish and water creatures!!! (The Dubai Mall also has a huge aquarium but with only 35,000 marine creatures). We also visited a mosque, the Burj Al Arab which is that famous 7-star hotel with a heli-pad and patterned after a sail, went over to Old Dubai which has the gold and spice markets, and of course to the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa.

After returning to the Shangri-la, we freshened up and were back out the door to meet up with friends. Besides the fact I have always been intrigued to visit Dubai, it helped that I currently have a childhood friend who lives in Dubai, Ariel Steinberg. As luck turned out, we also had another high school friend, Kim Toomer, who was in town for work, who seriously I may not have seen since graduation in 2002??? Or sometime during college visits home, nonetheless, a long time! We all met (along with Ariel’s mother, Leslie, who is wonderful, just happened to also be in town for a visit) at 360*. It’s a bar which jets off from the Burj al Arab with incredible views of the Gulf, the city, and the infamous hotel. It was such a fabulous time all meeting and catching up, after several cocktails we decided to extend the fun by heading back to Ariel’s apartment and ordering some Indian food.

I learned that the Marina is a popular place for folks to live that work in Dubai. The population of residents is actually 90% expatriates, so the community is large and helpful for those who relocate. It is actually hard to find Emirati people in Dubai. We went up to the 50^th-something floor in her building, which was not event near the top and my ears were popping in the elevator! It’s totally crazy to me how the buildings are SO tall, it’s a bit scary, but I guess you get used to living in the sky. We appropriately drank Schramsberg and had some of the best curry ever. I think I was sweating tikka masala for two days after, and I am not kidding. Now I know why the Spice Souk was so busy and a popular place to visit!!