And finally, the end of this grand tour, Dubai. After two days of walking and examining this city, a few prefacing observations.

- Dubai is a weird, weird place. It is at once a real place in a few small locales, and a completely unreal fantasy in most other places.
- Anyone really interested in cities must visit Dubai. The distinctions between real and unreal, working and unworkable, modern and less so, outlandish and wasteful and practical and useful, are all so vivid, so harshly drawn, caricatures really, that Dubai is a kind of laboratory for 20th and 21st century urbanism.
- There is the armature for an amazing city here – with Deira Creek as its centerpiece – which is where the old city began. At night the Creek and its surrounding buildings – none very tall – are magically beautiful. Working dhows line the east bank of the river, and the real neighborhoods of Deira are just steps away. Even during the day, the possibilities are plain to see.

- No, it’s not about to rain. That grayness and darkness is just sand from the desert.
- When in doubt, plagiarise: Dubai’s subway system, which is excellent, is an exact duplication of the best system in the world – in Singapore.
All right then. Let’s look around. And we’ll begin with Al Bastakiya.

Bastakiya is a reconstruction of what’s left of a typical 19th century Arab quarter. Originally built mostly by Iranian emigres, at least half of the historic district was demolished in the late 20th century. The remainder was saved by the arduous campaigning of an ex-pat British architect, Rayner Otter, with help from a visit, and suggestions to the Sheikh, from Prince Charles.
The district once was home to shops and about 60 homes, each with traditional wind towers to catch breezes, winding lanes, courtyards, and lots of shade and plantings. Today it is mostly galleries and shops, and a few restaurants. Nice to walk through.
We walked through Bastakiya and emerged at the Creek. On the Creek were abras – water taxis – and larger water craft ferrying folks across from side to side.


On the east bank of the Creek are the working wooden dhows, sometimes three deep. These boats carry freight to a variety of destinations – some in the Gulf, like Iraq and Iran, but also to Pakistan, Oman and India.
The freight is piled along the Creek’s edge, and loading goes on all day and most of the night. Cargo: tires, appliances, palm oil, building supplies, cars, you name it.

The real city is in neighborhoods in Deira like Al Ras, and Naif.

The old Spice Souk is here, and the Gold Souk as well. The Gold Souk is about a half a mile of shops selling everything gold. Almost 300 of them, all selling almost exactly the same stuff.

Now we can hop on the subway, from the enclosed platform which ensures coolness and quiet,

and head to fantasyland.

Big, tall office buildings, everywhere you look. Many unfinished, with work stopped as the recession hit Dubai hard. The buildings, even when they are side by side, have absolutely no relation to one another. In Dubai, the public realm is the street, and adjacent plantings (think of the water to keep all this green!). But that’s it. The buildings just sit there, each as if it was in the middle of the desert. Oh. They are.
There is no sense of conversation between buildings, no urbanism. Just dead zones of empty, hot and unfriendly space. Like this:

Inviting, yes?
But inside the Dubai Mall, the real adventure unfolds.

Yup – a giant aquarium, that is jaw dropping. Inside are Great White sharks, Manta Rays, and every shape and size of ocean fish you could imagine. It’s a couple of hundred feet long, almost a hundred feet deep, and seventy or eighty feet tall. Yikes.
Then on to the Souk Madinat, Jumeirah. This place, which suggests the Bastakiya and traditional middle eastern architecture, is a complete fiction. It’s a shopping mall, restaurants, and a couple of pretty fancy hotels.

And when we visited, eerily empty of anybody. Nearly deserted. Spooky.
But the Madinat does have a great view of the Burj Al Arab, one of the fanciest hotels in the world. In a wonderful piece of hubris, and typically Dubaian, the hotel calls itself the world’s only 7-star hotel. Harrumph.

We saved the weirdest of the weird for the late afternoon of our last day in Dubai. Near the Burj Al Arab and the Madinat is the Mall of the Emirates. And inside, amid every name brand shop you have ever heard of, we found this:

Yes, that is a ski slope, complete with ski lift, ice skating area, sledding hills, and of course places to ski. Inside the Mall. In Dubai. In the desert.
No telling what the future holds for Dubai. Perhaps all the over-the-topness will be tempered by the recession. Perhaps not.
It’s easy to scorn this place – there is so much goofiness and horrific waste and bad thinking and egotistical crap it’s almost unbelievable – but we also found things we liked, places that were quite wonderful. I am not sure we’ll be back anytime, soon or otherwise, but we’re glad we were here.
And now it’s airplane time – to Munich, then Dulles, then home. Time to reflect on all that overtook us in these weeks, all we saw and experienced, all that we found, all that we lost. What a world we live in.