Feb 1st-2nd – Dubai, UAE

The QM2 moved overnight arriving early the next morning at Dubai.

Talk about being in a different world yet again. I think I said that also about Egypt. To us us Egypt, which we saw very briefly, was real and interesting. Both Abu Dhabi and even more so Dubai, is mostly like Disneyland for rich adults. Bigger and better rules the day. 

Dubai was first settled in the late 1700s. It has a very good protected river & harbour which made it an active trading port.

Dubai was definitely over the top. There were architecturally interesting buildings in the race for higher and higher. We did a half day coach tour there and groaned we we saw it was the same tour guide as we had in Abu Dhabi. One of our stops was the spice Souk (market) with its typically very aggressive merchants. It had open stalls so it hard to avoid the merchants if you want to explore. Interesting to see, but to us westerners, mostly an uncomfortable way to shop! Some people love to barter – not us. We also visited the gold Souk, where you could avoid the merchants by not going into the shops as they were like traditional western stores. Bob called it bling on steroids. Tarja bought 2 scarves from the chap in the wine-coulures shirt—claims she got a good price.

The ‘sail’ building is a hotel where all the rooms are two storey suites, starting at $US 19,000 a night.

Dubai was the first stop where passengers could embark/disembark. No tours for us the second day although we did have to move cabins a little further down the starboard side. It was interesting watching the fuelling ship pull alongside and then fuelled the QM2 – for hours.

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