A Day in Dubai

Our flight to South Africa for our trip were through London or through Dubai. I figured we could see Dubai in a day & I liked breaking up the flights over night on the outbound flights. I've heard so many things about Dubai & it will probably be a long time before I visit any other Middle East/Arabian/Muslim countries, so I decided to go to the home of one of the world's largest mall (seen above).

Recently, one of my favorite photo blogs The Big Picture, featured some stunning photos of the construction and sheer size of things in this city. Through the giant cranes, you can see the $1B Atlantis hotel that just opened.

We're arriving after a 10+ hour flight at night & will spend 2 nights at The Harbour before continuing our flights onto Cape Town.

The recent history and development of Dubi has been incredible. There are many Houston people in the oil & gas industry that end up living over there & they have interesting stories. I'm sure I will be blown away by the vast size of everything. Since the recent global economic downturn and the low prices of oil again, things in Dubai are not looking too good though.

We're doing a mini-city tour in the morning and then a dune & dining tour in the evening where we go out to the desert for some fun in the sand before a traditional dinner.

So one of the more amazing things are these man made islands called The Palms. They are huge and provide a ton of "beach front" property in the gorgeous blue waters.

Zooming in on Google Earth, you can see each of the fingers on this palm is large enough for 2 rows of, what I'm assuming are gigantic, houses to be on the beach.

Another fun feature in Google earth is to see the size of some of the high-rise buildings that are rendered out in the 3D view.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: Sprinkler system is installed!