The Christmas tree at the Dubai Mall (which is still up, by the way) is gi-normous, as these three pictures show.
The color of the lights changed before I got all three pictures taken.
Here you can see the tree at Festival City.
As you can see, you can ride the escalator through the tree. Weeeee!
I’m not sure when the trees will be taken down. Some had “Happy New Year’s!” banners draped on them. Maybe they will add hearts and cupids next. January and February are the “Shopping Festival.” Like they need a shopping event here.
Archive for January 1st, 2009
Christmas trees
January 1, 2009Burj Dubai, fog, traffic patterns
January 1, 2009
Here are a series of pictures of the Burj Dubai (world’s tallest building) as we get closer to it. Our original intention was to go to Festival City – one of the many malls – but if you miss your turn-off, you are up a creek. It is often easier to just change your destination than to try to get back on the path to where you originally wanted to go. So, our destination changed to the Dubai Mall.
These pictures were taken at dusk and, yes, there is a significant amount of pollution, but this was also the evening of our foggy day (see previous entry) and there was still a significant amount of fog hanging around. Warm and foggy, imagine! In fact, we had to run the windshield wipers because it was condensing on the outside of the windshield and making it nearly impossible to see to drive.
The frame of the building has reached its highest point, now they are just filling it out. They haven’t announced exactly how tall it has turned out to be, yet.
Various and typical Dubai sites
January 1, 2009
Driving down Sheikh Zayed Road is like driving down a canyon.
This construction site has 15 cranes. We’ve counted them multiple times. We’ve decided that the philosophy is that they don’t want to have to move them, so they install enough to cover the entire construction site at all times. Considering that a few months ago a crane on Sheik Zayed road fell over, it is probably a good thing that they are not moving them about. (By the way, no one was hurt by the falling crane, which is an amazing thing, since that is a heavily traveled road.
Great advertising. “Big Tasty – It’s big and tasty!” One thing I am very glad of — we have not seen the creepy Burger King in any advertising here (although we don’t have cable, so maybe he is here.) KFC has a questionable looking chicken mascot making the thumbs up sign (with his wing???). He apparently thinks it’s great to be your entre.
The guys in this picture were painting the cross walk stripes with a bucket and a brush in an active intersection. That is typical Dubai!
I think the Picadelly Hairdressing Saloon speaks for itself. There are a lot of saloons here. We find the use of that word amusing. They are always gender specific. No unisex here. You can see into a gents saloon, but the women’s saloons always have opaque windows. It’s hard to wear a veil and get your hair cut at the same time.
Living the Travel Channel 