We stayed in a city just outside of Dubai called Sharjah and I'm really glad we did - we ventured into Dubai for one night and it was so insanely expensive and over-the-top! Sharjah seemed like a "real" city--very strict muslim--absolutely no alcohol served anywhere and for two hours on Friday during prayer time there was not one store or cornermart open ANYWHERE when I really needed a drink of water. Apparently it's required by law. Needless to say, I survived. And he people were very welcoming and the food was GREAT!
Here are a couple shots of Sharjah city--the skyline (lots of minarets for the many mosques)
Me in front of a pretty awesome souq (market). It was full of stores filled to the brim with gold, perfume and carpets - none of which I need/want, but were fun to look at.
These next couple photos are of a walk around the bay/inlet that was in the center of the city. It really reminded me of Oakland in many ways - it was the smaller, more real city next to a larger one (San Francisco/Dubai) and it had this nice walkway around the water lined with lawn and trees. The water was a lot cleaner than Oakland, too! One of the channels that connected this waterway to another one had tons of molluscs, coral, crabs and fish living in it and it was super clear and blue.
*****************************We visited a totally awesome Arabian Desert Wildlife center--they didn't allow any photos inside, but we saw all kinds of live snakes, spiders, foxes, flamingos, oryx, leopard, they had a big bird aviary and much more! It was super awesome, the displays were nice and the animals seemed quite happy and well cared-for. It's also a breeding center, so I guess they have reason to keep the animals happy. Here's a shot of me in front of the building.
Outside they had some Oryx (highly endangered), so I got a few shots of them. This photo shows the dominant landscape when you're not in the city with irrigation. LOTS of sand with a few scrubby bushes.
On the drive out to the desert park we saw camels just chillin' in the desert on the side of the road - so cool! It's probably like a tourist seeing a deer in Wisconsin, (boring to the locals) but I thought it was great. Here's a picture of a camel (which I got from the internet, but I wanted to include one because they're so awesome)
And here's a shot behind the building that highlights the contrast between watering grass and letting nature take its course:
I cannot believe they water lawn here - it reaches 105-115 F most days of the year and there's no good soil - only sand. Additionally, pretty much all their water comes from desalinization plants, which require energy to operate!*****************************
After the Desert park, we went back into town for a visit to the Islamic Cultural museum, which was really great. In all my years of math, science and chemistry education, no one ever told me the amazing contributions Islam had to all these fields. Also medicine! Here's a photo of (replica) of a distillation apparatus for rose water:
The Arabians and muslims really had perfumery figured out and used lots of awesome distillation techniques to isolate essential oils and fragrances.Because the moon cycle and telling time is so important in their religion, they were also amazing astronomers. They invented Astrolabes an they had a lot of nice versions on display:
It's hard for me to fathom someone machining one of these in the 1600-1700s! They consist of many layers of etched metal rings and have pointers to various pieces of information and they have a backside that you point at stars or the moon to get a proper angle. Super complicated! This next shot is just a section of the many images they had on the walls of old illustrations from islamic texts describing science concepts. They had water pumps, gears and machinery really figured out--all while Europe was living in the dark ages and dying from the plague!
This is an image of one of the hallways within the museum - a piece of artwork unto itself!
This strange thing had moving parts (the man in the box on top of the elephant constantly rotated) that worked based on flowing water inside the elephant - pretty awesome! It almost seems like a perpetual motion machine......
This next shot is of Andrea and I sitting in the cafe space on the top level of the museum. So swanky--too bad we were there just before closing and couldn't have any tea on the comfy furniture!
And here's the mosaic dome that was directly above our heads in the cafe:
it's difficult to capture the scale and beauty of it in a photo, so I will just have to say it was really beautiful and awesome. This museum was super nice, the signs were informative, (there were many more sections we saw with artwork, pottery, textiles, information on Islamic religion, etc. etc.) and the whole things was FREE! ****************************
And finally, here are just a couple last photos of Sharjah to show you what it really looked like:
Looks familiar, but if you look closely there's something a bit different....
There was almost every American/Western chain I could think of and it was hilarious to see all the familiar logos/images with arabic script (Krispy Kreme, Burger King, Bath & Body Works, KFC, Microsoft--you name it, they have it!) And also, there were tons of stores with nothing but hookahs and flavored tobacco for sale--wish I had room in my luggage for one!
Overall, I highly enjoyed my trip and recommend a visit to Sharjah. Dubai was as you might expect --insanely expensive and fake. If you have that much money to throw away, you should go someplace with more culture. Or donate it to someone who needs it.
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