Good Day Travelers!
Today I want to share the first of my two part Dubai series with you guys. In my most recent post about Abu Dhabi I talked about my 3 week stay in UAE and of course, being there already, I had to visit Dubai as well (Even it's not really a place which I ever had on my bucket list).
In this Post I will talk about my impressions about the city, talk about the positive and negative things and just give you a virtual photo tour around this area. Making it a 2-Part series I'll start with the popular Downtown District in this post. Beside the world famous Burj Khalifa (Tallest building in the world) there are also other parts to discover in this location.
Downtown Dubai
The first thing which I've noticed when I took my Uber from Abu Dhabi to Dubai was that the city is way bigger than I imagined it! In total there are 14 districts which are quite huge in size! Make sure to book your hotel/airbnb at the right location as you will probably end up using Uber quite a lot (Which is pretty expensive in Dubai)
The 2 main spots are definitely:
- Downtown Dubai (Skyline, Malls, Burj Kalifa etc.)
- Marina Bay (Restaurants, Malls, Bay walk etc.)
Unknowingly as I was and for a price reason I unfortunately booked my Hotel way to far away from the main locations. Each of the main spots were about 20 mins drive away and with the Uber prices in Dubai this can get pretty costly. So, better spend a few $ more for your accommodation in one of the main spots before you end up blowing your budget for transportation :))
Source
On the map above you can see how huge Dubai actually is. I'm not sure why I imagined it so much smaller but I definitely did :D - Anyway, lets start with our tour!
City Walk
When you visit Dubai I would recommend you to start a walking tour at the Dubai Mall. From this location you can already see the massive water fountains and of course, the tallest building in the world (which rarely fits on a single image, lol).
Beside the massive malls there are also high class luxury apartments around this area. Seeing some price tags for those apartments outside of them made me run away as fast as possible! They are astronomical high! But well, I've never planed to move there anyways, ha.
But jokes aside, the thing what really made my life difficult was the heat combined with the humidity - Not only for physical reasons but especially for my camera equipment! It was so hot/wet that my entire camera was in/out-side completely wet and it took ages to dry it up. The problem is coming from AC cooled areas to the outside - Just something my camera couldn't handle. It took about 1 hour until I was able to fully use my camera again :/ .
And there it is - the highest building on our planet - The Burj Khalifa with a total hight of 829m (2700ft)! I can guarantee you that looking up this enormues building makes the neck hurt quite a bit! Inside of the Burj Khalifa is a mall, there are apartments, offices and even a luxury hotel!
There is also a possibility to go on an observation deck (SKY) on the 148th floor which costs roughly 120$. For my budget that's way to high and from my pervious experiences are skyscrapers not the best location to take pictures from. But I'm sure it gives you a pretty special view! Maybe anyone of you guys has experienced it already?
At some point following the walking path you will end up right under the massive skyscrapers and as you can see there are quite a lot. As the temperature was way above 40°C again, the streets were quite empty (except cars)! This temperatures really aren't nice for long walks but hey, you do what you gotta do :D. Just make sure to hydrate as much as you can!
For me as a photographer there wasn't really much more to do than just walk around and enjoy the architecture. I'm not the biggest fan of malls and fancy restaurants/bars so I just enjoyed my time outside. For the second part I will write a post about Marina Bay which has a similar walking path but for my taste even more beautiful compared to the one in downtown Dubai!
I hope you guys enjoyed this little virtual walk with me! :))
Thanks for reading,
Best,
Chris
