Dubai Unveiled – Part 2

Well hello again! Thanks for coming back to the final installment of the Dubai tour. In case you missed it, you can find our first post here.
Let’s dive right in, shall we?
The Burj al-Arab Hotel.

 Going up the walk-way there were some lovely, very exclusive I’m sure, beaches.

 Let’s just park the yacht next to the Burj al-Arab and hang out for a few days, dahhhhling.

Here we are at the maingate. Apparently you couldn’t go in unless you were staying there or had reservations at one of the restaurants. I would recommend making a reservation and having a nice lunch just to see the inside- holy $&*%!

The Atlantis Hotel on the Palm Jumeirah (on last Friday’s post) as seen from the Burj al-Arab.

I don’t know what happened to other lobby picutres but this was right when you walk in. They also had a tiered fountain that went between the escalators carrying you up to the restaurant level. The tiers changed colors and shot water across from side to side in little shows (kinda like those fountains in Vegas).

We chose the Arab restaurant which was a buffet and the eatin’ was good!

Snapped this shot inside. The other tables did fill up, by the way. Guess we tacky Americans even eat lunch too early!

These were great! Ladies’ restroom…

Men’s restroom……

This is the mosque we toured though I can’t remember the name.
  

Being taught how to prepare to go into the mosque by washing our feet, hands and face.

The entrance. Islam forbids iconography (any pictures whatsoever) so they decorate their mosques with calligraphy from the Koran and geometric designs.

A bit dark but you get the idea.

Our tour guide was an expat from Britain and she was wonderful!

Sidekick 1

I volunteered for this example- why men and women pray separately. Because you stand so close to each other, it could be distracting or uncomfortable to stand next to member of the opposite sex like that.

Sidekick 2- explaining a bit about the culture. Early sunglasses!

The veils came about out of necessity living in the midst of all that sun and blowing sand.

This calendar showed the times of prayer for the day.

A favorite picture of the two of us.

Beautiful architecture!

This might look out of place but thats because it’s a picture of a picture. There were lots of examples of arab mosques in the courtyard and I loved this one.

 Chili’s finally!!! Notice the menu…

A quick (necessary?) stop at the gold souk. As you might expect, this desert city is much more active at night!

Bye Dubai!