Dubai

Our tour of Dubai was mostly in Old Dubai near the nine mile "creek" and market.

The seated man was singing traditional songs and banging away on his pots.  The OG busker!

We had a seat on his camel saddles.

His friend, the falconer was there for another show, I think.

Beside them was a Bedouin style desert tent , the blankets are made of camel hair.

Speaking of camels, we learned something about them.

 

Obviously.

They still use this ancient system of ventilating and cooling called Wind Towers.

Warm air is drawn in at the top, there is water at the bottom.  It's controlled by the direction of the wind.

We took a boat across their "creek" to the Souq, or market.

Along the way, we passed storage units.  These boats were packed with taped and wrapped cardboard boxes. 

This market is known for its gold shops.

But my favorite are the spice shops.

Also, we saw Justin Bieber.

So, that was cool.

Most of this crazy modern landscape was built after oil was discovered here in the late 60's.

The tall one is called Burj Khalifa.  (Which, by the way, is what people in the market called Tony). It is 2,716.5 feet high.  There is another building called the Burj al Arab that's shaped like a sail.  It has a helipad on the 59th floor that doubles as a race car track and even had a tennis match on the top of it. 

 It's a little crazy here.  When they need more land, they just create another island and build mansions or Disneyland type parks on it. 

There's one development out into the sea that is shaped like a palm tree called Palm Island.

You should Google this shit.  

Shiekh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum was responsible for most of the development of Dubai.  He has a few palaces and horses and family members and yachts.  You get the picture.

He had a yacht docked in Edinburgh, his second home. 

Apparently he and his entourage were really annoying and the Scots set his yacht on fire. So he built them a community center.

These types of negotiations are so straight forward.

That is going to be our Grail search in Edinburgh - that yacht and  community center!