The task of men is to surprise and delight women, women love warmth and the sea, these two coincidences led us to buy tickets for a sea cruise from the port of Dubai on the Emirates and the Sultanate of Oman. I have already written a negative review about this cruise, so I will describe all the positive aspects of the holiday and everything that I liked in detail.
I will start with a simple: delicious coffee, we tried in several places, everywhere was wonderful, only the price differed, where it was more expensive, where it was cheaper, but everywhere tasty and fragrant, high quality and quite affordable.
MSC Musica
Just for 2 dirhams long enough taken along the canal, you have time to enjoy the smell of sea water, but sometimes it is interrupted by the strong smell of fresh fish, apparently where they unload fish caught by fishermen and in the sun the smell only increases. A large number of foreigners, Japanese, Chinese, Germans, Italians in groups with guides, and couples as if to confirm that the route to get across the water to the other side is quite interesting. Certainly “local” population Pakistanis and Indians also cross on the same boats and stink their incense, or I do not know what.
The next public transport which is interesting by the stupidity of laying routes, it is certainly a bus. By the way, it is useless to ask on which bus you can get to where, even more precisely no one will tell you where the bus stops. I will tell you in detail how we got into it in general. Having taken a taxi to the free city beach near Mamzar Beach (before the paid beach), the taxi driver dropped us off a couple of stops (blocks) earlier. On the beach we met a man, it turned out he was a pensioner from Baku, 17 years worked in the Emirates, he told us about the buses, how to use them, and showed us where to stop. We had metro cards, but there was no money on them. The bus driver could not refill the card, so we doubted that we could go without paying. The pensioner assured us that you put the card at the entrance and at the exit, well, it will beep there that there is no money on it, and nothing. The driver will not drop you off and no one will check you anywhere. We decided to take our chances. The bus was surprisingly comfortable and convenient, with one caveat. It doesn’t go in a straight wide street for the shortest distance. It goes by corners, with the width of the road sometimes not more than 2m, we realised that it is a kind of residential neighbourhoods of the “local” working population, all houses are no more than 2 floors, there were shops, tyre repair shops, car service. We were going to get to the old gold market, as our hotel was about 20 minutes walk from it. Thus, a random bus ride, breathed on us the architecture of local backyards, and views of local yards where laundry is drying on ropes. If you’re not too picky, the views correspond to a computer shooting game where terrorists pop out from around the corner and everyone shoots and blows things up. So typical Iran or Iraq. All yellow and sandy in colour.
Another attraction is the next public transport metro. By the way, we boarded it from Dubai Mall. We walked through long passages for about 15 minutes until we found ourselves in a room with signs for ticket office and information. We said which station we were going to go to and were given tickets. We went through the turnstiles and started looking for an escalator down to the ground. We saw as we walked down the passage that we were walking on the 2nd or 3rd floor level, with cars driving below. Rightly assuming that the metro was downstairs, we still couldn’t find the stairs down. After asking for the third time “where is the metro?” we were led by the hand to the escalator to the top! We shrugged our shoulders and took the escalator up. Metro they have all automatic, is at a height of 3-5 storey building, has a good view, very good dynamics, smooth braking, almost does not rock and does not shake. It is convenient to get from Dubai Mall to Emirates Mall. The length is quite long, almost an hour we travelled standing, and judging by the names of stops it is about half of the metro. From the disadvantages of a lot of people, there was nowhere to stand, but almost no one was pushing, as we managed to jump out at the stops.
Our way was to the monorail Palma Jumeirah.
And this is the next transport, not sure that it is public rather a lure for tourists. Judging by the ticket prices that’s exactly what it is. The monorail is fully automatic, with no people operating it at all, and that’s how they attract people to it. We didn’t like it very much compared to the underground. Because it is slower, because it swings like an old carriage with a squeak, because the view is not very good, perhaps it was built much earlier than the metro and just obsolete, although its function of riding tourists performs.
Between the monorail and the metro there is another exactly public transport. It’s called the tram. It does not look much different from the metro or monorail, only boarding it at a stop you have to put your ticket at the entrance, then at the exit also at the stop. In the metro and monorail there are turnstiles and controllers. Of course, we didn’t know that at the stop you have to attach tickets, so we rode this tram as “hares”, because you can refill tickets only at the metro ticket office. In this tram we met a “conductor” with a “terminal”, who poked tickets and said something to us. We thought that “we need to add money”. She gave us the tickets back and went on her way. We took the same tram back to the metro, but we never found where and how to refill the tickets.
Now about the beaches. We wanted to swim at jumeirah palm when we got there by monorail. Through the Atlantis hotel we were not allowed on the beach by the security guard who said “onli notels”. In another exit from the corridor of the hotel was a ticket office in the water park with quite a decent price tag for entry.
How we bathed on the hotel beach through a hole in the fence.
It should be noted that looking out the window from the underground from the 3rd floor, or from the window of a tram or bus, you can hardly see people on the street, not at all. That is, people move along some passages like aliens on a planet with an aggressive environment. There is their own life, but people without spacesuits do not leave these arteries, in general, fantastic worlds …. Accordingly, the dome of the underground is visible from far away, but how to get into it on the ground is not visible! No pavements, paths.
