Friday, February 4, 2011

This was a small fishing village? As if.


Today, we opted to step back in time and try to find out about the old Dubai as everything we had seen so far was very new and modern.  Arriving at the Dubai Creek area, we got some idea that this may once have been a small fishing village. We took a Dhow River Cruise down to near the mouth of the creek.








Next stop the Dubai Museum which is housed in an old Fort.  The museum is very well set up and gives a great idea of what Dubai was once like.
We also looked through Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum's House to see artefacts and historical photographs.



Thursday, February 3, 2011

Dubai, the architects dreamworld.


The view from our room first thing in the morning was of the Buji Khalifa reaching 828 metres into the record book as the current tallest building in the world.  It is an impressive sight with the sun reflecting off it's shiny exterior.  Taking off in it's direction, there was a great view over the large pond (rather man-made lake) which lay in front of it.  However, we headed into the large Dubai Mall in search of the "Hop on Hop off" bus as a means of exploring this city.



We took off on the route which headed towards the beach resort part of town. We got a close up view of Burj Al Arab, a seven-star hotel with rooms starting at $5000 per night.  Next stop was The Palm.  This region is a man-made island shaped like a palm that is five km long and five km wide.  On each of the palm fronds are real estate strips with residential homes, each with their own beach.  The centre strip has residential apartments and five star hotels.  At the end is Atlantis The Palm Hotel where we jumped off to see "The Lost Chambers" which was a large aquarium.







Next stop was at the Mall of the Emirates which apart from being another gigantic shopping mall, houses Ski Dubai - an indoor ski resort.  Tempted to take to the slopes, I opted instead to have dinner in a restaurant overlooking the resort.



Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Games Up


Our last morning in Damascus - how would we spend it?  In the Bazaar, of course!  One of the main handicrafts in Damascus is inlaid wood work.  There are many beautiful jewelry boxes and furniture pieces made from many different types and colours of wood which have been cleverly mastered to fit together.  I had my eye on a board games table which folded out from a slim side board to a card table.  The salesman told us that it would come apart into two pieces which would in total weight 10 kg and one piece would even be small enough for hand luggage on the plane.

Apart from the stones which I had been collecting along the way and the odd souvenir, we knew that between us, we were 10 kg under the total allowed weight.  It seemed do-able!

After bargaining the "best" price it was organised for the packaged table to be delivered to our hotel just in time for our departure to the airport.  This occurred about 15 minutes late and the packages seemed slightly larger than what I recalled hand luggage was supposed to be.

Arriving at the airport, we tried to check in our two suitcases and the two pieces of table (as we were advised that the table pieces would certainly not be allowed as hand luggage).  After some discussion and dubious looks, we were allowed through and took our places on the flight to Abu Dhabi.

A three hour flight and we were in Abu Dhabi and catching the bus to Dubai.  After about an hour, we passed some landmarks which told us that we were nearing the centre of Dubai.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Lebanon!!!

After much to-ing and fro-ing about crossing the border to Lebanon, we made the decision to take the risk and visit Beirut for the day.  After all, catastrophes only occurred just we left a place - floods in Brisbane, the rioting in Egypt and then the government sacked in Jordan.  Beirut had had riots the week before but we had been assured that things had settled down.

We hired, Ali, a Lebanese man to drive us there and back.  The news reports from Beirut were accusing Syria of secretly running the Lebanese government.  Just to be sure that our car was not stoned, we had opted for a Lebanese numberplated car.  About a 45 minute drive from central Damascus and we reached the border with Lebanon.  After hopping in an out of the car at various checkpoints, we were finally in Lebanon.

Stopping in a village to change money, we were surrounded by beggars demanding money before we even tried to get out of the car.  Their hands were all over the windows.  It was hard to even get out but we eventually made it in and out of the money changers unharmed.

The drive soon became a journey through a snowy mountainous region and plenty of the cedar trees for which Lebanon is famous.







Arriving in Beirut, everything seemed like a normal big city - no burning cars or bomb damaged buildings. There was plenty of construction going on and reasonably heavy traffic and some crazy drivers - but after Cairo, it did not seem as bad as the descriptions we had been given.  Heading for the seaside, we were able to get an indication of how far along the coast this city reached.  Beirut is built along the coastline and up into the high hills which rise quickly from the sea.












We took a drive up to a catholic church with large statue of Mary and great view over the city.  On reaching the gates of the church, there was a military checkpoint (of which we had seen many since crossing the border).  We were ordered out of the car, questioned and our bags searched. The car was checked thoroughly for radio signals and bombs underneath.  Proving that we had no sinister motive, we were allowed in and got a great view of Beirut before sunset.



Monday, January 31, 2011

Road Trip

Taking a local bus, we travelled for four hours from Aleppo back to Damascus.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Monastery? or Monstrosity?

Driving out of Aleppo into the surrounding countryside, patches of olive groves appeared in the rocky countryside. At times, a herd of sheep camoflagued in the rocks and the hills could be made out as the lone shepherd sat on a rock keeping an eye out (or resting his eyes).

We arrived at St Simeon's Monastery which had been built in the fifth century.  The ruins give an indication of how massive this building really was - the size of at least four large cathedrals.  The rock blocks, archways and design gave us plenty of different places to explore.


















Returning to Aleppo, I took the brave step of shopping in the longest undercover bazaar in the world with two women, armed with their wallets.  The merchants, while still skilled salesman certainly are not as agressive as those in Egypt.  Similar to Turkey, they do actually allow you to leave the shop if you haven't made a purchase - unlike Egypt where they become rude, pushy and may actually continue perstering and chasing you down the street!