Dubai, UAE

 

March 26th:

A short over night trip from Muscat, Oman had us arriving in Dubai at 6:00am.  We sailed through the Strait of Hormuz and were for a short while just 15 miles or so from Iran.  As we came into port the city skyline gave an impressive site.  We were hoping for a clear photograph of the tallest building in the world……the Burj Khalifa, but that was not going to happen.

What we thought was mist or ground fog was airborne sand from the desert.  Thinking the air would clear by the time we left we were hoping to get that “great photograph”.  Well, we could even see the breakwater.  The visibility dropped to under 150’.   Below, the left photo was from our arrival, the right photo was our departure……the same location….the same shot.  That small disk you see is the sun, not the moon..

             

The city tour we took covered many of the sites unique to Dubai.  From the ship will drove through the city on their modern and very speedy freeway.  We took a number of photos from the bus, but visibility was poor so we had limited images to include in the blog. 

On the left below is a photo of the World Trade Center building in Dubai.  Many of the buildings we saw were very very interesting architecturally. The photograph on the right is Anne standing in front of the Burj Al Arab Hotel.

                   

Mosques were everywhere.  Similar to Churches in Rome.  One of the most impressive was the Jumeirah Mosque pictured below.

 

We were taken to a reconstruction of “old Dubai”.  Not like Colonial Williamsburg but just a few structures showing the city before 1960.

             

Besides the buildings, there were a few Bedouin camp sites depicted.  The one pictured below showed how carpets were used to keep the sand down inside the tent.

 

Our last stop was the Gold Souk.  We looked, but we didn’t buy.

       

After we left (in the sand storm) we expected the air to clear at sea.  On Sunday, March 27th we were still sailing south of Oman and the sand storm was still present.  The visibility cleared to about two or three miles, but it took until Monday, March 28th for us be be clear of the effects of the storm.  Interestingly, the sea was calm.  Just the reduced visibility from the sand.

For the next several days we are sailing almost due south parallel to the Somalia coast line hopefully far enough east to keep us out of pirate action.