Traveling Jones

  Busy weekend of sightseeing with our visiting friends Mark and Lisa.  Above is the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world at 880M.  After sunset, they use it as the canvas for an incredible light display.  Thousands of lights are built into the sides of the building and are choreographed by computer into something uniquely spectacular.  I’ve attached a 4-5min video at the end of this post.  Below, a daytime view of the Burj Khalifa, which literally means Khalifa’s Tower.  Khalifa, the ruler of the UAE at the time and brother to the Dubai sheik, rescued the financially troubled project in its latter stages of completion in 2010 and was honored with the name   View of the roof of the Dubai Mall (the largest mall in the world) from the top of the Burj Khalifa (the tallest building in the world).  The Dubai Mall contains over 1200 stores across 13 million square feet (roughly the size of 50 football fields). It is also the most visited...

Good weekend here in Dubai but relatively uneventful. We enjoyed a couple of dinners and explored some new places. Pictured above are several highend cars parked in front of the hotel at the Medinat Jumeirah, a fairly common sight here in Dubai. There is a lot of money here and Americans seem to be the only ones who have to pay income tax back to their home country.  FYI, these are not our cars! One of stops this weekend. Thought I could at least get some decent beer. Bonus . . . They served pork knuckle! (actually a shank but I’m not going to correct them) Another stop . . . Trader Vic’s, from the famed Warren Zevon song Werewolves of London. Piña Colada anyone? I’ve posted these before but worth an occasional repeat. These are residential towers in the Dubai Marina where we live. The Cayman Tower on the left is most interesting as each floor is offset by 1.2 degrees. In total, the top floor is offset 90 degrees from the bottom. I called it “the Twizzler” when we first arrived her...

Weekend getaway to the neighboring emirate of Abu Dhabi to see the Celtics/Nuggets exhibition game. Basketball is huge here!  About an hour Uber ride for us and we stayed at the W Hotel overlooking the F1 track (pictured above) Wall sculptures in the lobby depicting pearl divers, the primary economic driver here prior to oil. The Etihad Arena where the game was held. It’s about the size of the Boston Garden and bears the name of the second largest airline here in the UAE. A map of the UAE as a point of reference. There are 7 emirates which are like our states, each run by a sheik. The capital is Abu Dhabi and the sheik of Abu Dhabi is always the ruler of the UAE. Dubai is economically powerful but not the seat of political power, a bit like NYC vs Washington DC.