Old Dubai

Inside the Dubai Museum - once a fort protecting Dubai Creek and the surrounding sea

Monday, February 19

We took a taxi to Bur Dubai to see the Dubai Museum and spent an hour looking around the old fort and the museum underground.  The museum is in the oldest building in Dubai – an old fortress structure dating from the 1700"s. Inside are examples of boats, fortifications, a well, and most interesting, - a recreation of a Bedouin house and wind tower, constructed from palm tree materials.  Underneath the fort is an exhibition of life in pre-oil discovery Dubai,  with mannequins in dioramas.  There were also a number of archeological specimens  collected from the Jumeirah area – mostly clay pots and some bronze artifacts.  Clearly, it was a hard life with little extra resources over the centuries, until recently.

Fortress and lookout tower of Dubai Museum

Dubai Museum is located in Bur Dubai, one of two original sections of the city (pre oil)

A Bedouin house made from palm materials with a wind tower built to capture wind 
from any direction and funnel it down into the house

Bedroom - open air and situated directly under the wind tower

After we left the museum, we wandered around a bit looking for the water taxi  (abra) station to Deira, thinking we would go to the spice market and the gold souk.  The streets immediately around the museum were filled with wholesale textile shops – I saw some amazing bolts of silk – including some that were already beaded with crystals and seed pearls outlining the flowers on the fabric.  We walked through the old souk area in Bur Dubai on the trail to the water taxi.  In this area, the sellers were especially aggressive – one man actually put a pashmina scarf around my shoulders to try to get me to stop and talk with him.  At this point, we really felt like we had enough of the “old souk” experience.  Since were weren't in the market for either spices or gold, we decided not to take the abra across the creek, but to watch them for a while from the dock and enjoy the water and the breeze. 

One of the entrances to the Old Souk in Bar Dubai

Souk with market stalls

The abras serve as water taxis across the Dubai Creek - in this case from Bur Dubai to Deira

The Bur Dubai Old Souk water taxi station

This friendly pilot will take you across the creek for the small sum of 1 dirham - the boat holds 20 people