Arabian Tea House
Last one off the plane
Dubai airport at 1 p.m.
With an expected layover of more than 12 hours in Dubai, Colleen had done some research into possible activities that were relatively accessible from the airport. One suggestion from her coworker was to pay a visit to the Arabian Tea House, exactly the sort of thing that Colleen is into. When we touched down at about 12:30 p.m. in Dubai, we took our time getting off the plane, then wandered through the massive terminal that was almost entirely empty and made our way to the Red Line of the Dubai Metro. Google Maps claimed that it would take over two hours to get to the tea house from the airport if we used public transportation, which we were a little confused by, but we had the time to spare, so we pressed on.
A large sign on our way to the metro station announced that a McDonald’s Cheeseburger Meal could be had for 15 AED (United Arab Emirates dirham). For the rest of our time in Dubai, all prices were converted to cheeseburgers, which was a fun and surprisingly effective way to establish the value of things.
Dubai Metro stations
We got off at the metro station indicated by Google Maps, which put us alongside a busy freeway. An enclosed moving walkway carried us through a tube over the traffic and deposited us on a hot sidewalk on the other side. We set off on foot in the blistering heat, relieved at the dramatic reduction in humidity. I quipped that we’d be fine as long as we stuck to the shady side of the street, but when we turned the corner to head WNW, we found that there was no shady side of the street.
Photographic evidence that I drink water only in the most dire of circumstances, courtesy of Colleen
Later on, I consulted Google Maps to see that we’d only walked about one mile to get from the metro station to the tea house, but under the merciless sun it felt like at least double that. We now understood why Google Maps showed that it was a two-hour journey. Other than an occasional tree or awning, there was no shade the entire way. The only relief were a couple public faucets at which we stopped to refill our water bottles. It goes without saying that we were the only people on foot (although we did see one person on a bicycle, albeit an electric one). Many readers might be wondering why on earth we didn’t take a taxi, and there are two simple answers: pride, and better writing material.
We were a wilted, sweaty mess by the time we arrived at the Arabian Tea House. We could see through the large curtained windows that it was an upscale place, with staff in matching uniforms moving amongst well-dressed customers sitting on white-cushioned chairs at white wicker tables. Since our only two options at this point were heat stroke or humbly asking if we could be seated, we chose the latter. The AC was such a relief it almost hurt.
The wait staff were gracious and patient with us, and it took a little time to gather our wits and make sense of the many delectable comestibles shown on the menu. They offered a formal tea, complete with stacks of dainty desserts, but it was not available until 4 p.m., and we were almost an hour early. We switched gears and ordered a lime and mint drink with crushed ice (the single most refreshing beverage I’ve ever had), labneh and flatbread, and a salad with thyme, cucumbers and pomegranate arils. We ate slowly, and as with every meal at the end of an arduous journey, it was mind-blowingly delicious. When the savory items were finished, we took our time looking at the menu once more, and this time ordered some date cake and fried pastries covered in a caramel syrup accompanied by some specialty teas: one with saffron in it, the other mixed with milk, sugar and a complex array of spices.
The dessert course was even better than the light lunch items we’d had prior. By now we’d had a few interactions with the staff, and one lovely young woman from Cameroon named Regina seemed to take a shine to us. One of the other items on Colleen’s extremely tentative agenda for the afternoon was to take a gondola ride on the canals, hopefully as a means to get to a metro station and a train back to the airport. We asked Regina if she might know where we could find such a ride, since Google Maps indicated it was somewhere nearby. She said she had a friend who did this very thing, and that she would be happy to call a taxi and tell the driver where to take us. The wait staff were not allowed to use their phones, but her supervisor made an exception while she helped us.
The taxi arrived, Regina used her phone to show the driver where we wanted to go, and we thanked her as many times as we could before the taxi zipped off. The driver, a Pakistani man, asked us if we were certain that we knew where we were going. We said we weren’t certain, we were just looking for a boat ride on the canal. He said that if we wanted to go to the canal, then the directions that Regina had given were not correct. He claimed to know the city like the back of his hand, and he assured us that he would get us where we needed to be. Since there wasn’t much we could do from the back seat, we said he should lead the way.
We drove and drove, looping from one freeway to the next, and it started to feel as though we were going much farther than necessary to get to a place that had seemed so close by on the map. When asked, our driver confirmed that he was taking us to “the canal, with many shops and tourists and boats.” He showed us the map on his phone, and I saw that we were going to the artificial island in the shape of a palm tree that I’d seen in some magazine or other shortly after it was completed. It slowly dawned on Colleen and I that when people in Dubai spoke of “the creek,” they were talking about something very different than “the canal,” and we had made the mistake of using the terms interchangeably.
To be fair, for someone from the western United States, “the creek” looked much more like a canal than a creek, at least based on the pictures we’d seen trying to figure out how to get there. But our imprecise use of language had resulted in a wild goose chase, and it was fairly evident that our taxi driver was growing weary of driving us in circles, even if he was getting paid by the kilometer to do so. He agreed to take us to a metro station that was in fact very near the creek, and we hoped that that might give us an opportunity to find a boat ride, but we had no such luck. He dropped us off at a bicycle path that ran between the parking lot of a nice hotel and a vacant lot that was currently in use for several cricket matches. We could see that the path wound its way around the lot and would take us to a metro station, so we thanked the driver for his patience, apologised for our lack of clarity, then set off once again on foot under a much less vicious late-afternoon sun in the direction of the metro station.
Photo courtesy of Colleen
If those footprints look reminiscent of Buzz Aldrin's, that's because the dirt is more like lunar powder than sand
We did eventually find our boat
It was rush hour when we got on the metro train, and we were greeted with more than a few confused looks by some of the people on their way home from work. The Dubai Metro offers first class tickets, which allows the ticket holder to ride in a separate car at the front of the train, presumably with less spartan accommodations than those provided for the “regular” ticket holders. We seemed to be the only people of caucasian extraction that didn’t get the memo.
Tired and satisfied that we’d extracted as much adventure as we could from our layover in Dubai – even without a gondola ride – we made our way through security, which didn’t open until 10 p.m. We found a couple lounge chairs and rested until it was time to board the plane. As a stark reminder that we were leaving civilization, there was a surprise TSA check at the door to the jetway. Everyone had their carry ons opened and searched and were then patted down. Anyone that had refilled their empty water bottles or purchased liquids for the flight after passing through the normal security checkpoint were forced to discard everything before being allowed onto the plane. The mood was sullen and irritated as people took their seats for the 13-hour flight to Newark.