To connect the main Dubai neighborhoods, there is the 12-lane highway running parallel to the sea (the Sheikh Zayed road… quite obvious name!), which is very packed! To avoid traffic, Dubai introduced a pay system for this highway which automatically registers your car (like the German toll collect system), but it doesn’t seem very dissuasive!

For tourists, the most popular means of transport is taxi. It is obviously very convenient and in the UAE, the transparent pricing system with fancy board computers is very visitor-friendly. No need to be scared of being ripped off. I don’t want to know what would happen to a dishonest taxi driver if you went to the tourist police to denounce him… I guess he would be put on the next boat back to India…!  

However, I am convinced that you haven’t visited a place until you have tested all the public transports! So no to taxis (unless there is no alternative).

The city bus system is quite developed too, but not easily accessible for tourists since there is no network map or timetable available at the bus stops. Talking about bus stops, they are air-conditioned in Dubai, which is certainly quite nice in the summer months!

There is a new tramway making a loop through the Marina neighborhood. It’s beautiful, has meshed windows for sun protection (and runs without ugly power cables), but I don’t really see the added value since it is easy to walk around in this area.

To me, the best means of transport is the Dubai metro! It was such a pleasure to use this metro that it deserved its own article! Dubai has 2 metro lines, which makes moving around the city easy. There are only a few places which cannot be reached by metro where you need to take either a bus or walk (walk a lot!).

To pay for the rides, a chip card – the NOL card – needs to be purchased. You load it with money and can use it in all the public transports of the Dubai Emirate. You only need to tag on and off the metro stations or buses and it debits automatically the right fare! This is of course nothing unique and I have used it in many metropoles in the world… But seriously, every time I have the chance to use such a card pay system, it makes me cry that Germany is still so behind with that! I feel like we will still buy paper tickers in 2100 in Berlin! And not paper tickets with a magnetic stripe or any kind of intelligence! No… paper tickets with badly-printed info that the controlling guys need to read! (not talking about some cities like Munich where the pricing system with all its zones and rings, and sub-rings, etc… is so complicated that you need to get a PhD to get the right ticket!)

But Dubai wouldn’t be Dubai if there wasn’t anything special about this NOL card…! You can indeed purchase 2 types of card: the gold or the silver one! Basically, it’s like first or second class anywhere else, but gold and silver sounds more Dubai-esque! Some Internet sites and friends being in Dubai advised me to buy a Gold card, so I did so!

I regretted it afterwards because you pay twice as much for each ride, and I didn’t really get the advantages! You get to seat in the reserved gold wagon, with wide seats, air-conditioning and a nice view since it is the first (or last!) wagon of the driver-less metro. But seriously, the silver class also has a first (or last) wagon and air conditioning. It is just a bit more crowded. And maybe it doesn’t smell as good as in the gold class! There was always a great clean smell and it was really spotless!

In addition to the gold card wagon, there is also a special lady wagon (but they don’t need to purchase a pink card to use it! Haha!).

The red line is mainly running outdoors on an elevated bridge, parallel to the highway, and offers great views of the city. It is basically a cheap sightseeing ride (or expensive one if you are gold like me!).

A special architecture price for this building looking like a frame (but not for the Egyptian-style buildings on the left… obelisk and pyramid…!)

The metro stations almost all look the same, and are so beautiful… really futuristic! Some station entrances in the historic center have a more discrete design, imitating old buildings.

And the interior design of these stations is just obscene and too much!

 

After spending my first night in my hostel in Dubai, I finally had the chance to see where I was in the daylight. My dorm room had a balcony so I could have a first look outside, and was quite impressed! Welcome to the future!

By the way, as you will notice on the pictures, most of the apartment skyscrapers have balconies up to the top floor, which I’ve never seen anywhere before! Imagine having a sunbathe on your balcony on the 80th floor!

To continue in the category “Little Guillaume is discovering the world”, I was amazed by the elevator system. There were 6 elevators numbered from A to F. To use them, you have to enter your desired floor number on a little display and it shows you the name of the elevator to take. There are no buttons in the elevator. You program it yourself before entering it!

Leaving the building, I walked towards the Marina, which gave the name to the neighborhood. It is the biggest Marina in the world, and it was entirely man-made. Warning: I will use superlatives quite often because Dubai is desperately seeking for them! (Before building the Marina, Dubai already could practice by building the largest man-made harbor in the world! Haha!). Quite impressive with all the condos around and the nice yachts.

A few minutes away, you can find the fanciest beach of Dubai, the JBR beach, with a nice promenade with cafés and restaurants. That’s where you can see the pale (lots of Russian!) tourists enjoying their first sun of the year. And there is as much on show as on any other beach in the world! No burka for the Matryoshka! You cannot really feel that you are in an Arab country. It feels very western, very Miami or Venice Beach.

Of course, the area is full of construction sites. In particular, a Ferris wheel is under construction… and guess what?… yes… you got it.. It’s the biggest Ferris wheel in the world with 210 meters!

I found my favorite French bakery chain, Paul, and couldn’t resist! I was happy to buy one of the best viennoiseries ever: an almond croissant! Yummy!

After leaving the JBR beach area of the Marina, I reached an area with very high skyscrapers, between 300 and 400 meters high… and very densely built. There is only a little gap between them so that it feels weird when you are standing in-between. And the crazy thing is that these buildings are not offices but either hotels or apartment buildings (and guess what… they all belong to the highest apartment buildings in the world!).

One of them (the Marriott hotel) has a bar at its top floor (52nd). I had a drink there just to enjoy the view! And the view was stunning!

Being on top of one of these skyscrapers is one of the few chances to get an impression of the Palm Jumeirah! (it must be better from a plane or a satellite though, but it’s more expensive…!). From the ground, it is indeed impossible to appreciate this neighborhood which looks completely normal.

The Palm Jumeirah was one of these pharaonic projects where Dubai conquered the sea! The original plan was to build 3 palms in the sea. Two are finished: the Palm Jumeirah which is now almost completely constructed and the Palm Jebel Ali which is still not developed. The third palm, the palm Deira, was replaced by some normal-shaped islands built on the sea. The other project, the World, where an island neighborhood shaped like a world map was artificially built, is also still waiting for its first constructions.

What is amazing about the Palm Jumeirah is its dimension! Normal people can only drive on the main road in the middle until it goes into a tunnel and reaches the Atlantis Hotel, the landmark at the end of the palm. And this road is about 8 km long! The inner side branches of the palm are only accessible to residents (living in the most expensive villas in the UAE!). The outer branch called Crescent is built with luxury hotels.

I hope you enjoy the view through the (dirty) windows of the Marriott bar! By the way, they are dirty because it is sometimes rainy in February in Dubai, and the few small rain drops and the desert dust are not a good combination for windows!

A fancy neighbourhood like the Palm also needed a fancy public transport, so the Atlantis hotel is connected to the beginning of the Palm island by a monorail (which is of course almost not used since the people living there use their Ferrari / Lamborghini and the rich tourists of the Atlantis or other hotels only use taxi…).

I had the chance to get a car ride at night to the Atlantis hotel with Thomsan, one of my Couchsurfer hosts. It’s quite impressive when you see the hotel at the horizon, and the road suddenly gets into a tunnel under the sea, until you drive next to the hotel! We had a walk along the Promenade of the Crescent at night, enjoying the illuminations. The Atlantis hotel is obviously super kitsch, and looks already a bit old. But without wanting it, after seing its picture on travel magazines for years, it’s hard not to like it!

A quick side note: apparently, the Arabian Gulf is not so fond of Dubai’s extension projects. The breaking of waves eroded the external island strongly, so that they had to add dozens of meters of rocks to prevent it from disappearing… That’s why the beaches of the hotels are on the inner side of the crescent… the outer side is just artificial rocks! Nature always wins!

Back to the walking tour… After enjoying my expensive fresh orange juice with view, I continued my walk around the Marina taking hundreds of new pictures.

Objectively, the architecture of the skyscrapers is not very courageous… quite boring even I would say. Even if some of them were designed by world famous architects, it seems like they sold to Dubai some old designs that nobody else wanted…! Many buildings are also very strongly inspired by existing buildings, not to say that they are copies…!

A good example is that twisted skyscraper which looks so similar to the Turning Torso in Malmo / Sweden (from the amazing architect Calatrava!).

After my walk through the Marina, I reached a metro station and went to the Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa area… But this is another story… 😉