We had a good night's sleep and after a leisurely breakfast we were ready to shop. Tim drove us up to the origial centre of Dubai which was based around the creek about 25 km north of where they live in the Jumeira Beach Residences. The Dubai skyline is sensa-tional and there is still an enormous amount of building going on.
We parked up and then went on foot to the Souk where Rosena bought most of a spice shop. This was a very different retail experince as we were invited to take a seat and offered chilled drinks while the shopkeeper and his henchmen admired Rosena's binoculars. They showed us video clips on a mobile phone of going hunting goats and geese in Iran. We moved on to the waterside where we caught one of the Abras, a wooden built passenger ferry, that ran regularly across the creek. Our desination was another souk on the opposite bank. The waterway is very busy with abras, tourist boats and heavily laden dhows which operate around the Gulf and as far as India. These carry anything and everything piled high on the decks.
We strolled around declining the entreaties of the vendors, who were mainly selling textile products including one stall with Lastcost polo shirts complete with crocodile badge. We went to a waterside restaurant for lunch and ordered mezze with lemon and mint drinks. Once again the food was delicious but this time I remembered to take a picture. After lunch there were more shops to visit before returning home for smoko.
Thursday evening in Dubai is the start of the weekend and the traffic is horrendous. We went out for cocktails to Trader Vic's, a taxi ride back towards town. This was part of a large hotel complex which had its own creek with its own abras. The cocktails were splendid.
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