The Sultan's Turret

We spent the day in Dubai, U.A.E.

The first thing that comes to mind is Shanghai X 10. Sorry Shanghai. The air was a balmy 70 degrees. The city was beautiful. Tonight we caught them cleaning the marble sidewalks with a Zamboni across the street from our hotel. Car tires squeak when making turns in the street. Everything smells like fresh Mock Orange Blossoms, Magnolia and Hyacinth. The water - in great abundance - is flung around this desert oasis like proof of opulence and is crystal clear - almost inviting you to drink deeply from every fountain.



While enjoying a late afternoon cup of traditional Lebanese coffee with cardamom and a mint infused lemonade, Paula and I discreetly watched a women in a full burkah try to drink a large, whipped-cream laden iced cappuccino. Another woman behind us listened thoughtfully between puffs on her bubbling hookah while a man intently leaned toward her and expounded on deeply philosophical riffs about the eventual downfall of the American real estate market due to failed morality while he simultaneously attempted to convince her that her company finances were safe with him.

Speaking of water, we watched a fountain that put the Bellagio to shame. 100 foot jets of water frolicked to Michael Jackson's "Thriller" across a half-mile-wide, man-made pond.

Supper was a vertigo-laden experience in the world's tallest building at the At.Mosphere Lounge on the 123rd floor of the Burj Khalifa - completed in 2010. Our server was a Chinese guy named Miker who hails from Shanghai! You can have a conversation with anyone here by just asking where they are from. Two women at the reception were from Kenya and Uganda. A woman who helped us find the elevator was from Paris. No one seems to be from Dubai.

Blah, blah, blah. I'll stop now. But no.

This ten-foot shark was behind a Guinness Book of World Records - world's largest single piece of plexiglass. And it was inside the Dubai Mall!