This will probably turn into a very long post full of very random rambling things. I would put Dubai in its own post, but considering I spent less than 22 hours there, it may as well all be crammed into one!
In the last couple of weeks, I realised that I had visited a great many restaurants and cafes, so I decided to try and remember all of them, which lead to me on a mad last week scramble to match the number of places eaten with the number of days stayed – 84 – and managed to complete this quite easily. What an amazing achievement considering I’ve probably visited a low 3 digit count of places in Sydney, and high two digit in two years in Adelaide!
A last minute cafe that I had to visit was Shift Espresso Bar, who had some cool “specialty” coffees with cool names, such as Rebellion (double espresso with condensed milk and whipped cream), Hashtag (double espresso, vanilla gelato, oreo), etc. I went for the Nicaragua single origin and a Rebellion, and they were both quite nice. I’m not a fan of sweet/novelty coffees anymore, but the rebellion didn’t taste too bad at all; I got it more out of curiosity for their presentation.
My last breakfast of course, came from Jason’s Bakery in the form of the Wild Wild West breakfast – sausage, beans, sourdough, egg. Personally I would have preferred two eggs since I love eggs, but it was still delicious!
And then I was off! Zoom zoom
So I’d been awake since 6AM Cape Town time on a Saturday for breakfast, a second breakfast, lunch, before finally heading out for an afternoon flight. The in-flight entertainment selection had greatly improved from three months ago, so I treated myself to The Imitation Game (which I loved because some of it tied in so well to Person of Interest – the parts about human versus machine, and if machines could think. Plus I reckon it helped me with my little cyberpunk story project thingy too!). I decided to also watch Interstellar, but alas, I fell asleep before the ending! So I have no idea how it ended, except that it was to do with trippy black hole gravity time bending stuff. I guess it was a good thing that I got sleep, I estimated it to be about 5 hours of plane sleep. Well, that was as good as it was going to get, because by the time I got settled in Dubai, it was Sunday 8AM – which according to my “explore Dubai” schedule, meant I had to be out and about.
My first impression of Dubai was that outside of the city, it was “buildings in sand pits”, and inside the city I affectionately thought of it was “sandcastles and glass towers”. It’s such a mixture of different cultures that it’s amazing!
First stop, Dubai Mall to buy my tickets for the Burj Khalifa. Me being me, managed to walk into the residential area, and then had to circle back around to get to the actual mall. The tower is a really impressive sight!
Dubai Mall is pretty massive, but I knew I didn’t have the time or the luggage space to buy anything, so I didn’t go into any stores. There were plenty of intriguing sweets shops that I would go back to. The mall also has some great features, like the hanging butterflies and the fountain of divers.
I was originally just going to get some breakfast here as the food court had interesting food, but then I decided to venture outside, and that’s when I saw Fortnum & Mason beckoning me with its almost Tiffany & Co blue.
I never managed to visit one in London, so this was the next best thing! I had no idea what I actually wanted, so I managed to wander into the tea salon. The view from here is amazing, and though it was a very windy day, I managed to be able to sit outside without having anything blow away.
They have an awesome tea selection, though I’m no connoisseur. There were two assams that caught my eye, so I asked the waiter which of the two I should have. I was recommended the Dikom estate.
I love having fancy tea! I didn’t actually like the style of the teapot, and I was worried that the leaves would sit in the water for too long and make it all tannic, but the tea was that amazing that it remained smooth throughout the entirety of my breakfast.
The one thing that strikes me as odd is the fact that there’s no such thing as tap water here. Even Cape Town had tap water, but here it’s all bottled. I ended up being given a 500mL glass bottle of water that I only had half of, which was kind of awkward. I ordered the scrambled egg and cured trout for 90AED, which was actually very costly when I thought about it, but I was glad it was also a decent size! I think this makes my most expensive breakfast, above Sushi Dai. The bottled water, tea and eggs came in at 205AED – yikes! But hey now I can say I dined at Fortnum & Mason and had a great single estate assam while gazing at the Burj Khalifa.
It was then time to finally go exploring and start my quest for coffee. I had googled a couple of places in preparation for coffee hunting in Dubai, and figured my best bet was a place called Specialty Batch Coffee. I still had no idea how to use the public transport system, so taxi it was – which was a good thing too. My driver managed to hone in right on where the Google dot marked the spot, but I couldn’t see any shop front that looked like a specialty cafe. After circling around, I decided I’d try my luck on foot, and took advantage of the fact that I knew I was a tourist, and walked into the nearest building to ask around.
It turns out though, that what I was seeking wasn’t actually a cafe! I had walked into the correct building, and the “coffee place” was on level 15 – the guard asked me if I was there for a coffee course, but I mentioned that I was simply seeking coffee, and he told me I could go up anyway.
Isn’t this the cutest little Synesso? With an adorable cup! With much awkwardness I decided to walk in and found a group of people all working with coffee. Being my odd self, I mentioned that I was visiting and hoping to find out what cafes to go to – after a time they invited me in and explained what they did. The owner then came in and introduced himself – apparently he’s from Melbourne and has been working in Dubai for the last few years. We had a great conversation about coffee and I got to sample a couple – an espresso from a roaster in Seattle, and then a filter from their own roast – which was so juicy and tasted like strawberries!
He mentioned that in Dubai, there wasn’t really anything in the way of specialty coffee right now. Cafe Rider, the only other coffee place on my list, was apparently the only cafe that served specialty coffee, the rest weren’t that great. Well, that meant my coffee adventure ended as soon as it started! They were a great bunch though, and did mentioned that they would be opening a cafe soon, which means an excuse to stop over again in the future.
The buildings are seriously amazing here! And being stranded in the middle of nowhere, I felt it was time to test out the public transport system. I walked to the closest station and fumbled a bit to figure out how to get to the Marina, which one of my taxi drivers had recommended. The person at the information booth simply said “Damac station” or something to that effect, and so I just said yes, and received a nifty contactless paper ticket! I totally didn’t realise that these lasted 180mins with 3 transfers allowed, so there I was buying a whole heap of tickets till I gave up and bought an all-day ticket.
Walking through what I believe was the Jumeirah beach area (I did manage to get glimpses of the Burj Al Arab while I was on the road, but I didn’t take any pictures. I also didn’t manage to see the Jumeirah beach hotel) was quite interesting. I love going through alleyways and managed to find a set of stairs nestled between two massive sand coloured buildings. 
What a cute little sculpture thing!
The beach was very interesting because I’ve never had a view like it before! The sight of construction was so weird, as I’m used to seeing just endless ocean. They also had an outdoor cinema way further right. It was about lunch time now and I knew I had to eat, but my appetite wasn’t quite there, which I attributed to not having had proper sleep in the last 24 hours, so instead of choosing something I hadn’t had before, I defaulted to a light meal of sushi (I ordered each piece off an a la carte menu) and a sea bream tartare. Since the tartare came with free sides, I went for miso and cabbage salad.
I guess the sushi at Kyoto Garden Sushi in Cape Town really left a mark, as this I felt was your average sushi shop. Tasty, but not mind blowing.
It was then time to figure out how to start heading back to Dubai Mall, for my final hours in Dubai up the Burj Khalifa!