DESTINATIONS DUBAI | MIDDLE EAST
BEST OF THE REST
E Dubai Parks and Resorts: With its Legoland, Motiongate and Bollywood parks, this is a magnet for adrenaline enthusiasts. Among my highlights was the Madagascar Mad Pursuit rollercoaster at Motiongate – which has you blasting off at serious speed with pitch-black, fluorescent lights flashing all around – and the indoor Miniland at Legoland, complete with a tiny replica of the Burj Khalifa.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Spice Souk; desert safari; Gold Souk; Dubai Creek
PICTURES: Dubai Tourism; ShuGa Photography; Shutterstock
E Expo 2020: Dubai will host Expo 2020 for 173 days next year, with art installations, a rotating observation tower, 200 food outlets, rooftop screenings and the nation’s first Emirati opera among the attractions, all themed around ‘opportunity, mobility and sustainability’.
18.00: When night falls, head to the Marina – a trendy collection of cafes, street-food pop-ups and shops set around a twinkling, yacht-lined harbour that’s popular with the expat crowd. At the heart of the action is Pier 7, where seven swanky restaurants stacked on top of one another overlook the water. Among the standouts is Asia Asia, which serves fusion dishes against an Instagrammable backdrop of giant Buddha statues, glossy marble floors and fuschia-pink furnishings.
pier7.ae/en
DAY TWO
09.30: Dubai isn’t just about the superlative skyscrapers and glossy malls. For a more
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emiratesholidays.com
travelweekly.co.uk
traditional experience, head to Dubai Creek, the oldest part of the city and once the UAE’s main trading hub, which helped the city rise to prominence in the mid-20th century. Today squeaky, wooden abra boats shuttle you across the water to see its highlights, which include the Spice Souk, where puffs of incense rise above tubs of mustard-yellow turmeric, deep- orange cinnamon and rainbow- coloured mixed spice. Vendors entice you into their stores with sweet, coated dates and rich, camel-milk chocolate, while Arabian lamps hang above sequined Indian bags and Emirati crafts.
11.00: From here, it’s a three-minute stroll to the Gold Souk, the biggest
gold market in Arabia, made up of a network of narrow streets where necklaces, rings, bracelets and entire gold dresses shine out from glossy shop windows, with precious stones and sparkling diamonds everywhere you look.
12.00: Interested in learning more about the area? Head over to Al Shindagha Museum, a recently opened, ultra-modern spot where interactive displays, photos and videos talk you through the history of Dubai Creek, with stories from locals who grew up in the area, and a panoramic-screen film projection that shows how it developed. Entry from £3.
alshindagha.dubaiculture.gov. ae/en
13.00: If there’s one thing you can’t leave here without seeing, it’s the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding. Decked out with burgundy rugs and traditional Arabian furnishings, the centre hosts various experiences including an interactive cultural lunch, where
a lively Emirati tells you about traditional dress, culture and cuisine, before you tuck into a buffet of local and Indian-influenced dishes (think hearty curries, biryanis and syrupy, doughnut-like luqaimat balls). Lunches take place at 1pm from Sunday to Thursday (price depends on group size).
cultures.ae
16.00: No visit would be complete without a trip into the Dubai desert. Platinum Heritage offers a half-day option that has you bumping up and down the sand dunes in an open- top 4x4, passing oryxes, gazelles and other wildlife, before stopping to see a falcon show, where an expert falconer tells you all about how they train these solitary birds. It’s followed by a dinner and cultural performance at a Bedouin camp, where a smorgasbord of barbecued meats (I even tried camel) are served around a campfire as performers sing, dance and drum the evening away (prices from £124).
platinum-heritage.com TW 28 NOVEMBER 2019 87
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