Dubai Stopover

Dubai or not Dubai - that was the question! Normally we head for the wide open spaces for our relaxation, not man-made tourist meccas such as Dubai. Still there was a fascination to see why 15 million tourists flock to Dubai each year and so the fair Nello and I found ourselves having a two-day stopover here on our way to trekking in Europe.

Contrary to our expectations of Arabian weather, we arrived to gray skies and the odd bit of drizzle, but still 30°C plus temperatures. In two days our exploration was but brief, seen largely through the perspective of a tour bus loop which dropped you off and picked you up at the various tourist highlights. Dubai is indeed an amazing place, the historic Dubai set around a creek with its mix of old and new and then the mega-modern Dubai unchained, heading off to the southwest along a 12-lane freeway to a series of spawning grounds for ultramodern skyscrapers; the style a blend of neo-traditional concrete and modernist glass and steel. If nothing else, it is a tribute to creativity in concrete.

Everywhere, cranes hovered over building sites and sand was being reshaped for roads or monorail tracks or new shopping malls. Our trip ended at the Palm Dubai development, where the land has been extended into the sea in the shape of a many fronded palm, each frond densely packed with 5-star hotels and luxury condos; so vast that it is visible from outer space. This is graffiti on a landscape scale! Yet it is only the beginning of a series of even more massive reshaping of the coastline into artificial and unnatural forms that are destined to be packed with concrete and glass-steel structures; development here is out of control. To us, Dubai was like a bubble about to burst, smooth and shiny, reflecting the colours of the rainbow, but held together by a thin economic film.

The next day we headed out into the desert to see something a bit more natural. However, if you are just passing by and cannot afford the helicopter trip from your 7-star hotel, you are obliged to go on a desert-dinner combo trip for a bedouin barbecue, with camel riding, falcon holding, belly dancing entertainment. Spoon-fed tourism cannot be avoided here.

The trip involved travelling in a convoy of dune-bashing 4x4 vehicles and, while the child within enjoyed the adrenalin rush of sliding sideways down the face of dune or the sudden change of view from sky to sand as the car crested a dune and nosed down the other side, the environmentalist without couldn't help wondering what I was doing here. Still, we made a brief stop, where we could disappear behind the back of a dune and quietly take in the vastness of the desert beyond. For 15 minutes, we got a feeling for the emptiness of the world beyond Dubai - a brief, but worthwhile encounter. In the end, this was really what we came to see.

Leaving Dubai, we flew into Rome and the next day set out on the metro looking for a very specific destination, no not the Coliseum or the Vatican, but Viale Tito Livio, Monte Mario - no. 55 to be precise. For the fair Nello, this was a return "home" to where she lived as a child while her father was on a posting to Italy .... over 50 years ago. This was our first pilgrimage of the trip and it was still there, jogging distant childhood memories, including the pizzeria at the bottom of the street. We stopped in for lunch.

Classic skyline of Rome

Pilgrimage over, we wandered back down the hill to the Vatican to join the throngs of tourists doing touristy things. We checked out the long circular queue in St Peter's Square waiting to visit the Vatican, climbed to the top of Castel Sant'Angelo for the classic view of the Tiber and the rooftops of Rome, followed a procession with Madonna into Piazza Navona, watched the Romans emerge for their evening strolls over a beer in Campo de Fiori, did the classic evening walk past the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain (with its bathtub ring of tourists 6-deep around the edge) and on to the Spanish Steps for a night view of the Roman skyline. It was a good day.