Saturday, December 4, 2010

Dubai: also know as Do Buy

While Will and I were on our Big Bus tour, we had a tour guide that took us on a walking tour of the Old Souk (traditional market) in Bur Dubai. He pointed out to us that the city's name says it all; Dubai means Do Buy. The guide books and travel sites were not joking when they claimed the national pass time is shopping. There are malls and souks everywhere you go. I have counted over 10 major malls in Dubai alone. When I say major, this malls are 3 to 4 times the size of Oak Park mall in Overland Park, KS.
Mall of the Emirates. The spaceship looking structure is Ski Dubai.
Wafi Mall is very luxurious with shops like Channel
and Burberry.
In fact the first week or so that we were here, when we had a hard time finding places to eat we just headed to the nearest mall and would find something from there. I think it is due to the scorching temperatures in the summer, but we have rarely found anything that opens to a street front. Instead you will find most everything in a mall; including restaurants, clothing stores, entertainment, and grocery stores in the malls.

This is at the Dubai Mall. The big structure that looks like
a big speaker is actually outdoor air conditioner.
Apparently they have so much money they can air
condition the outdoors.

The restaurants that we find here are very similar to the ones you find in the State. There are not many local restaurants in Dubai, so in the last few weeks Will and I have eaten at Chili's, California Pizza Kitchen, Pizza Hut, FatBurger, Baja Fresh, and so on. For the most part they taste like they do in the State with the exception that all pork products are band, so they try to imitate it with beef and they don't do a very good job.
The California Pizza Kitchen sign in Arabic.
The shops are a little less American because they also have all of the European shops that are sometimes hard to come by in the USA. They have Zara, Mango, H&M, Bershka, Promod, Stradivarius, and so on. It has been fun to shop in these because many of them I have not been in since I was studying abroad in Barcelona. The malls also have American stores like Banana Republic, American Eagle, The Body Shop, Forever 21, Express, Blomingdales, and so on. I find it interesting that there are so many American stores present because when I was in Europe it was unlikely to come across these.




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