Ibn Battuta Mall - Chinese court
Ibn Battuta Mall - Egyptian Entrance
Ibn Battuta Mall - Persian Lobby. October 2019
[from FB posts: December 5-8, 2012]
Day One in Dubai: Got terribly lost trying to find a Pakistani restaurant. After an hour of walking around some pretty faceless neighborhoods, we found it. It was a delish lunch for TWO for about about 12 bucks. Mmmmm.... then some more walking around to settle the food. Now just back from a fabulous Lebanese restaurant which was about the same price! Mmmmmm...... Love vacation, Love food 🙂
Day Two in Dubai: A search for an Indonesian restaurant brought us to a little hole in the wall place serving the Indonesian/Malay community. I try not to be too harsh being far from SE Asia but... kind of disappointing. My friend thought it was FABULOUS however. Then an afternoon of walking around Dubai Mall which is Mall of America-esque -- it is just cavernous.
Day Three in Dubai: Oh... disappointing lunch at an Indian place 🙁 and then a trip to Ibn Battuta Mall which is so campy and over the top it defies description. All the regions of the Islamic world are recreated in very ornate detail... along with the usual suspects like Gap and Starbucks. Then a late afternoon coffee in the Marina which is must an awesome place... if I won the lottery, I'd buy a condo there for sure! 🙂 Finally a FAB Lebanese dinner at my favorite Syrian/Lebanese restaurant in Dubai. mmmmmm
Day Four in Dubai: Well, getting ready to leave for the airport. Amazing how time just flits by on short vacations like this. We had a great Pakistani lunch (only 7 bucks for 2 people) and then took the metro to the HUGE Emirates Mall and had latte watching people on that indoor ski run. I can't even imagine the energy it takes to make the snow and keep that place cold!!! Then back to the hotel area (we were checked out) and just hanging out waiting for dinner. We could not resist...more Lebanese food... mmmmmm My friend left to go back home. He lives about 1.5 hours out of Dubai. I came to check internet and then I'm off to the airport. Tomorrow, Singapore.
an adventure becomes a routine
In the days of traveling back and forth to Singapore from Milford, the airline industry was changing. I used to get the cheapest ticket via Frankfurt or Amsterdam from New York on Singapore Airlines or KLM. Emirates Airlines started to promote Dubai heavily and I found that the cheapest tickets were no longer via Europe, but instead the Middle East. Luckily for me, MWK had landed a job in Dubai and for a short time SL and RL (old friends from Singapore) were living in Dubai as well. After an exploratory visit where I discovered Dubai COULD actually be cheap (Germany and the Netherlands had no cheap stopover options), I started to fly via Dubai, with a stopover, on my way to Singapore. When I started life afresh in Abha, Saudi Arabia, I soon discovered the best international connection was also to fly to Dubai first and then onward (even if it meant back-tracking geographically). In short, for over a decade, I was flying through Dubai all the time.
Most visits were for 3-4 days, which was ideal. A literal stopover of one night was not enough time to spend with friends and "relax" - I tried it, and it was not comfortable. Staying at Dubai Airport's glorious Terminal Three was actually better for a longish layover. Taking a week in Dubai turned out to be too much time - not that there was a lack of things to do, but after a couple of years MWK and I had done everything, so places got repetitive and I hate to say it, "boring". 3-4 days was perfect.
Generally, I woke early and slipped down to Caribou Coffee [see: Caribou Coffee] while M slept and I gave him time to wake up and start the day. After that, we made a plan and headed off - usually arriving just as places were opening up. We took lunch out wherever we were which might have been at a restaurant chain in a Mall (a relief from the bad food in Saudi Arabia) or at a place catering to foreign workers serving Pakistani, Indonesian, or even Afghan food (incredibly tasty!). We would walk around some more, stop for a coffee, and then head back to the hotel. A self-catered Happy Hour of G&T's and snacks was served in the room (with cheap gin from Duty Free and tonic water from the tiny supermarket across the street) in the late afternoon. The evening meal was often at Aroos Damascus [see: Aroos Damascus], MWK and my favorite restaurant in Dubai.
Most trips to Dubai included a trip to Dubai Mall or Mall of the Emirates simply because they were cavernous and we could get a good workout walking around. Dubai is really not a pedestrian-friendly city. Nevertheless, my favorite place to walk as long as it wasn't too hot was Dubai Marina [see: Dubai Marina]. In the winter months, we could walk there in the daytime and in the warmer months, at night (in the "hot" - no place is walkable in Dubai at any time of day). I think I liked the Marina because it reminded me of Manhattan. A stopover in Dubai for me was not complete without at least a coffee taken down by the Marina.
So it was that with the help of MWK, I perfected the Dubai stopover. As with everything, even that became old with time. Now that chapter of life is closed, although I occasionally could use a walk in the Marina or some good food from Aroos. The past is always hard to recapture. Onward.