Not all parts of Dubai are as new and grand as the Palm, marina and financial districts so we headed to the Creek/Deira area to see how Dubai used to look as it was starting to develop.
Dubai hosts a brilliant Cultural Centre that shows visitors what homes and life looked like historically (in the 1960s!) and then offers a traditional brunch paired with a lengthy conversation about life, religion and culture in Dubai. During our walk around the Cultural Centre's "old town", we learned about the way they used tall towers to create natural air conditioning and narrow streets to allow the buildings to create awnings and sun protection. Also interesting was how they only had windows on one side of the house to prevent windows in abutting houses looking directly into each other.
Over brunch, our discussions about Arabic coffee, the local dress, family relationships and the daily lives of the Emirate people proved eye opening and interesting and we all certainly left with new information and insights.
After an educational morning, we wandered down to the water and paid our 1 AED (approx 33 cents) to take a small dhou boat across the Creek. The buildings by the Creek are much smaller and more understated than the other parts of town but the people roaming the streets are far more numerous. Streets are abuzz with people wandering about, pushing trolleys of inventory for the nearby shops and merchandise to be loaded onto the shipping dhou boats scheduled for departure to other countries.
The gold market - the world's largest - was crammed full of jewellery that seemed almost identical across the market's hundreds of stores. Much of the jewellery was a bit too large and showy for us - with necklaces that were almost a large as the front of a t-shirt. Nonetheless, we enjoyed browsing the merchandise and hopping into stores to breathe in the air conditioning and try to negotiate the cost of gold coins down to fair market prices. What a bustling part of Dubai! 
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