The Dubai shopping festival was setting in and was the second day after inauguration. I had extended my stay to accommodate the luxurious experience of shopping fiesta of Dubai. It was my last outing from Sharjah as I was returning back the same weekend. The shopping festival is also a good time to find deals on almost every product on display.

It was a Friday and the weekly holiday for my father as well. He planned to stay home and take rest from the past hectic week and we started a little late in morning. We headed directly to the Dubai Festival city which is supposed to be the heart of all shopping bonanza.

During the shopping festival time, all the city outlets participate in some way or the other but this is the central place for rippling out any effect to the city. It is a permanent shopping arena with multiple brands present under one roof. The only difference at festival time is that the deals kick in and the number of people visiting increases manifold.

As any other shopping area, it was huge with multi-level floor facility and lavishly decorated. The economic slowdown seemed to have had an impact on the buying power of people. There were lot of window shopping being done but the number of serious buyers was less. The food court on the top floor was busting with families on a picnic event. A good time and place for the entire family to enjoy the experience.

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An engineer by profession and an avid traveler by choice! A photographer by passion!

I have been roaming many different parts of India and UAE in life. The galleries have been posted after my visits but they seem to be deep embedded in the blogs. I have created an index for all these travel galleries which should help in easier navigation for all visitors to my blog.

From the heritage ruins of Hampi to the glittering cityscape of Dubai all have been linked to this index which can be accessed from the link below.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE GALLERY INDEX

The blog post of Dubai gives a description of how to go from Sharjah to Dubai, specifically Gold souk and the surrounding heritage places.

A gallery has been uploaded with a larger set of images to get a visual feel of how the area looks like and its neighboring heritage places which have been kept intact in the midst of city with all the lavish lifestyle and skyscrapers.

This gallery is also an experiment to see how the new gallery which has been integrated looks like and has the user experience for browsing the photos.

Feedback is welcome on that.

Click on the image below to visit the gallery link.

My second week in UAE was nearing end and it was our second visit to the city of Dubai. This time it was just me and my mother exploring the local transport service.

The local transport is extremely comfortable with Mercedes branded buses. This was my first visit to Dubai in the inter emirate local transport buses accompanied by my mother. We planned of visiting the world famous Gold Souk and the heritage places around it.

The local bus route can be found out at http://www.rta.ae/wpsv5/wps/portal/bus_time_table?SwitchToLatestLocale=true . The gold souk is a very popular and major bus station from where you can reach at any destination. We started our journey with the bus station in Sharjah near Rola. The link mentioned above is also the government website which gives correct and reliable data. The buses are on time and follow a schedule which is very good and helps in finer planning of the journey.

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The trip to Hatta was a very traditional, unlike city environment. The photos in an earlier post of the trip easily illustrate that fact without any contention.

The city of Dubai and around is known more for the man made structures and skylines. The next day on Dec 27, 2008 we planned to explore the City Center of Sharjah. My father leaves home around 7:30 in mornings for office coming back around 6 pm. This gave my mother and me a good amount of time to explore the places near our home.

We had a heavy breakfast and I looked at google maps to find the place where I intended to go and how to reach there. Our home was near the national paints office on Emirates road. This was a very prominent junction where all taxis come by and the bus service is also quite good.

The road to City Center was dead straight about 5-6 km from our home and then a left turn about 500 meters would lead us to our destination.

We wore comfortable shoes and a heavy breakfast set the tone for an exciting day ahead with lots of fun. The stop of bus route number Read more