Walk the Catwalk, or Day 49 in Dubai

This morning was a relaxing one. I filled myself up with a poached egg sandwich late in the morning, and we were off to the Dubai Museum.

My guide book praised the museum as being one that focuses on “interpretive displays.” As I was walking around the museum, I kept bumping into and apologizing to all the manikins—the displays were very interpretive. I learned a little about everything; Dubai history stretches back much longer than Doha’s, with people here over 7000 years ago. They have been digging up artifacts from the Bronze Age, including burials and village sites.

One of my favorite facts, though, was about the five daily prayers that Muslims do. I knew that three were at dawn, noon, and sunset, but I didn’t realize that the other two were at last dusk and when an objects shadow is as long as the object is tall (roughly 15:00). Jessica has been guessing the time whenever we can hear the call to prayer, and she’s pretty accurate.

When we were walking to the museum in the late morning, we were getting pretty warm, so I made sure to look thoroughly through the collection in the air-conditioned building.

Right by the Museum was the Bastakia Quarter. This renovated district is now full of little artisan shops and guesthouses. The crisp walls, slight breeze, and greenery were a lovely place for an afternoon bite and drink. We wandered through the area, stopping in on an Iranian dealer and a art gallery before going back to the main road.

We had a few hours to kill before our evening plans at Dubai Mall, so we decided to see if we could figure out where the Dubai Fringe Festival was taking place. We managed to confuse a concierge, so we decided just going to the Mall (which was right by Burj Dubai) to hang out for a bit wouldn’t hurt. Thankfully, the concierge did know where the nearest Metro stop was.

We got to the Mall and the Burj and, after some typical tourist picture-taking, walked into the pretty mall I’ve seen in a while. Of course, we walked in on Fashion Avenue; all the big players had their spot, from Armani to D&G. We looked around a bit, then wandered to find ice cream. After a long, hot day, where we had discovered the grand hotel we wanted to see cost over $50 to go inside, so we stuck around the Mall and spent $10 on Coldstone.

We knew that a few fashion shows were scheduled for the evening, so we wandered to the Fashion Catwalk and got a seat to watch the up-and-coming “Haute Pink Couture,” a line done by two Emirati designers. There was a mix of local and Far Eastern influences, with a lot of zany imagination in there too.

I had heard about these “dancing fountains” from a friend and saw the Souk Al Bahar in the brochure, but I didn’t put two and two together until we were outside, the sun was setting, a bunch of people were around, and music started playing. I got a few pictures before the battery died in my camera as well, but the spouts of water were very reminiscent of the sword dancing we saw yesterday at Heritage Village as well as the dancing during Qatari Day.

We went back inside to see another fashion show (this one focused much more on abayas and a few fancy dresses) then we popped back to the souk to find some dinner.

It was pricey by our standards, but we found a pizzeria with some soup for Jessica and some pizza break for me. We also got to see the fountain go off twice more before we went inside for our last fashion show.

I’ve just realized this post is very “and-then-we-did-this-and-then-we-did-this.” I want to get this all down before I hit the sack tonight (since we have an early flight in the morning) and I’ll do some digesting in the next day or two.

So, to finish up my daily details, we went to a final fashion show, then took the Metro back home. We didn’t realize it the first night we were here, but just a few blocks away from us is Al Rigga, one of the locations of the carnivals for the Dubai Shopping Festival. We walked through it on the way here, and we were dazzled by more bright lights, in addition to some sort of Far Eastern dancing, some clowns on stilts, and some booths of crafts, bad DVDs, and carnival food.

Now, we are attempting to turn in for an early night, but getting distracted by the television. Our flight is early so we can still make classes, which means a lovely 04:30 wake-up call. It’ll be good to be back in Doha.