Dubai part 2

GRAND MOSQUE.  The UAE, or United Arab Emerites, is made up of 7 states, or 7 emirates.  Abu Dhabi is the biggest "state," or the next emirate over from Dubai.  Abu Dhabi has the "Grand Mosque," the largest and most elaborate mosque in the world.

It is also the only mosque open to the public, and they offer tours of this mosque.

 Wow, I must say.
 A chandelier consisting of 12 tons of Italian glass, assembled in Germany.

The world's largest single carpet, woven by the hands of 1300 carpet knotters, working around the clock for 12 months

.  Marble columns throughout, inlaid with mother of pearl.  The mosque can accommodate 40,000 worshipers at once.

Women are asked to wear long sleeves to the wrist, and pants to the ankles, while visiting the Grand Mosque.  If you don't have that, they have burqas (robes with hoods) for you to put on over your clothes.

We wore our own clothes, and Lori provided scarves for us :)

EATING GOLD.  After the Grand Mosque, we went to have lunch in The Palace.

 It is actually a palace, and it used to be the home of a prince, or something.  Of course, it got too small (?!?!) so he built a bigger and better one down the road, and then what is one to do with an old, used palace?  Imagine the conversation:  Well let's make it into a restaurant, shall we?  With some shops and offices in one wing.

People will want to take pictures of this huge palace, but we don't want just anyone coming in.  So how about you cannot come in unless you have reservations for a meal, or ok, at least drinks, in our restaurant.

 Here, we will be one of the only places anywhere, to serve Camel Burgers.  And as an extra touch, we will serve them with shavings of GOLD on top!  Yes, people will love it!"

So we ate camel burgers, with amazing sweet potato fries,

and

desserts to DIE for...with gold shavings on top!

GOLD BAR ATM.  Also in the Palace was a Gold ATM.  You could put your credit card in and buy a pure gold bar.  They were small.  The cheapest was 650 dirhams, or about $175.00 US dollars.

The price was updated every 60 seconds, to reflect the change in the price of gold.

 Maybe that was for 5 grams of gold...about the size of 2 postage stamps?  These "bars" of gold were very small.

DESERT SAFARI.  One afternoon we went "Dune Bashing," which just means everybody loads into a Toyota 4Runner, and a Professional Maniac Driver drives up and down the dunes so you feel like you're on a roller coaster!  The sand goes on and on and on.

After our dune bashing, they drove us to a camp for evening activities.

 There were camel rides and an Arabic dinner.  Don't worry, the camel rides were SUPER-short, just enough time to snap some pictures.

But of course we did take pictures.

The entertainment was dancing...a belly dancer first, then a "whirling dervish." I didn't even know what those were, but they spin and spin like there's no tomorrow.

Internet photo. You can't capture speed in a picture.
He was Really. Fast.

Then they have props and throw things in the air, and set fire to them, and all the time they are spinning and spinning.  I really couldn't believe it..it made me dizzy just watching the guy.

How in the world he did not simply pass out, from the blood and oxygen being pulled away from his brain and heart, to his outer extremities, I have no idea.  He was pretty wild.

TALLEST BUILDING.  The Burj Khalifa is currently the World's Tallest building.

 It's half a mile tall.  Half. A. Mile. Tall.

At floor 124, it has the World's Tallest observation deck.  It also has the World's Highest residence,  The views from the top are pretty amazing.

Are you noticing a trend, here?  We visited the World's largest Mall, the World's Only indoor ski resort, and saw what they claim is the World's Largest aquarium (but we went online and read that a larger one has now been built in Atlanta, Georgia).

All the biggest, tallest, widest, fastest, whatever-EST you can think of, they want to build it here!

CHURCH ON FRIDAY.  The Islamic holy day is Friday.  Many of the people work 6 days a week, and if they only get one day off, it will be Friday.  Businesses are open for their work week of Sunday to Thursday, and the weekend is Friday/Saturday.  So, we went to church on Friday.  Kind of different!

COOL-SHAPED BUILDINGS.  It was fun to see some wild architecture.  There was one downtown Dubai that twisted as it went higher and higher.

far left building: twists

 Then driving around Abu Dhabi, we saw the Hurricane Building,

Hurricane Building

and the Coin Building.

Coin Building

SKI DUBAI.  The world's only indoor ski resort: and of all places, it's at "The Mall!"  Lori said, "Oh, the best view is from this room in the Cheesecake Factory, at the end of the mall."

 So we walked in and through the restaurant like we belonged there, and she led us to a room with a window wall, where you could watch people coming down the mountain, either on skis, sleds, or these wild inflated hamster-ball things.

CAMEL PANTS. We went to the souks, or outdoor markets, one day.  Scarves for sale galore, and dresses and camels and genie lamps.

 More STUFF than you could shake a stick at!  Teresa and Kara came home with some cool camel pants.

Another day we went to the "Gold Souks,"

where the entire marketplace was gold jewelry and gold clothing and more and more gold.

 Here is an awesome ring that Teresa fell in love with.  Pretty amazing artwork in this jewelry!

Now this post is getting long, and sometimes I know it can be tedious to look at other people's vacation pictures!  I just thought I'd include these photos, since Dubai is not your average tourist spot, at least for U.S. citizens.  We wouldn't have thought of going, if Lori and Paul weren't living there.  Oh, here's a picture of us with our hosts.

 They made it such a good visit for us!

Wrapping up now.  We of course came back to bitter-winter-Boston, but it was awesome to have a whole week in February, wearing summer clothes again.

Have a great week!  Kari