By another Pilgrim
Sitting here by the hotel pool in the dying sunshine, a game of water touch football has slowly degenerated into a game of tackle – the soundtrack (thanks to the pool-side DJ) is a mix of Celine Dion and Arabic mix 106.5... (nevertheless) the swim is much needed after a day of walking around in 30-something degree heat.
We’ve had an excellent couple of days – but to begin at the beginning – we all hopped on a pretty flash A-380 Emirates flight at 9pm, on Wednesday in Sydney and most of us were meeting our fellow pilgrims for the first time. Some of us got a bit of intermittent sleep during the 14-hour flight – but for those who couldn’t the movie list was a pretty good second choice.
As we pulled in to Dubai at 5.45am in the morning, the pilot informed us it was 37 degrees Celsius! We piled on to the, thankfully, air-conditioned buses and began our tour through the city… Dubai seems a bit like the Las Vegas of the Middle East. Everything is either the biggest, the tallest, the most expensive, the fastest, or just the best in general… To name a few, Dubai has the biggest shopping mall, the fastest elevator ride, the most expensive hotel, the tallest building in the world, one of the biggest gold markets and to top it off 68% of Emiratis are millionaires (thanks to some nifty laws preventing foreign owners from owning a majority of a business – leading to extensive ‘sponsorship’ deals for locals). It is an architect’s dream – every building (and there are plenty going up) is flashy and has some unique design feature… But for all the construction that seems to be going on in Dubai – it is pretty empty; apparently occupancy (I think maybe just in the resorts) is around 48%!
As well as being the biggest, richest and bestest, Dubai specializes in the artificial – why go to ski fields when you could go to their biggest, indoor ski slope? As well as a ski-field – most expensive villas come with their own personal, artificial beach. We visited the main artificial beach, and then the mall and the gold market, but mostly just wanted to stay on the air-conditioned bus by the end of it. Then we were on a flight to Egypt! (After about an hour on the tarmac)…
Three hours later we arrived in Cairo as the sun was going down, made it through passport control (where there seems to be a custom of forming a parallel line and just merging in, if you don’t feel like waiting at the end of the queue). We hopped on our bus and made our way to the hotel – meeting our guide for the trip, Cherie, who gave us a short history and demographics lesson. As we drove past the “city of the dead” she told us about the Mausoleum guards who decided to take up residence in them – and now there is a whole suburb basically where people live in the old Mausoleums...
When we finally reached the hotel we were all ready for bed – but jetlag-prevention strategy demanded that we stay up. The hotel is pretty snazzy – an outdoor pool surrounded by long low chairs and palm trees sits in the middle of the foyer, dining hall and the rooms. We got served up a feast, and then (more than an hour later) had Mass for St John Marie Vianney’s Feast… Finally it was time for bed!
No comments:
Post a Comment