Old Dubai in two days
The best part of Dubai is a saltwater inlet with wooden boats on it, and most visitors give it ninety minutes on the way to something else.
This is the half of the city we build every Gulf trip around, and the two days below are the version we hand to clients. It is walkable, it costs almost nothing, and it is the part people describe first when they get home. It is also, by any reasonable measure, a small area: the whole of it fits inside about two square miles either side of the water.
A word on what “old” means here. Dubai in 1960 was around 40,000 people, a customs post and a collapsed pearl trade. The buildings below are mostly nineteenth and early twentieth century, coral block and gypsum, and several are careful reconstructions. That is not a criticism, it is the accurate frame, and knowing it makes the two days better rather than worse.
Before you start: the clock
Everything below assumes November to March and an 8am start. The old city has narrow lanes, little shade and a lot of walking, and by 11am in any month the sun makes it unpleasant. The right shape is 8am to 11.30am, a long indoor lunch, then 4pm until dark. The souks are better in the evening anyway, when they are lit and working.
Stay in Bur Dubai or Deira for these two days if you can. It puts you inside the walk, and rooms there run $70 to $150 a night against three or four times that on the beach. See what a trip to Dubai costs.
Day one: the Bur Dubai side
Al Fahidi historical district, 8am
The restored quarter of courtyard houses on the south bank, built of coral block and gypsum with wind towers rising off the roofs. Those towers, barjeel, are pre-electric air conditioning: open on four sides, they catch whatever breeze exists and funnel it down into the room below, and they work.
Go at eight. The lanes are empty, the light is low and side-on, and the groups arrive around ten. Walking it takes forty minutes and there is no route: the point is to get lost in three metre wide alleys and come out somewhere unexpected.
Inside the quarter are small museums, galleries, coffee places and a cultural centre running Emirati breakfasts and question-and-answer sessions with local hosts. That last one sounds like a set piece and it is the best hour of context available in the city. Book it.
Al Fahidi Fort and the Dubai Museum
The oldest building in the city, built around 1787, a squat coral fort at the edge of the quarter. It has held the Dubai Museum, and the museum has been under redevelopment in recent years, so we confirm what is open for your dates rather than promising it here.
The Textile Souk and the Hindu temple lane
Walk north from Al Fahidi to the covered market along the creek’s south bank. It is a working souk selling fabric by the bolt, pashminas and tourist volume in roughly equal parts, and the honest note is that the shopping is unremarkable and the walk through it is not.
Behind the souk is a small lane holding Hindu and Sikh temples that have served the Indian trading community here for generations. Unsignposted, quiet, and a reminder of how long this side of the creek has been a trading port rather than an emirate.
The abra, mid morning
Now do the best thing in Dubai.
An abra is a small wooden boat with a diesel engine, an open deck and benches down the middle. They cross the creek continuously between Bur Dubai and Deira, they cost a coin, and they leave when full, which is every few minutes. You sit on a plank at water level with twenty people going to work, the water is a few inches below your hand, the towers are behind you and the dhows are in front, and the crossing takes five minutes.
It is the cheapest and one of the best twenty minutes of a Gulf trip, and it is the moment most people’s picture of Dubai changes.
Pay the boatman on board. Coins, not cards.
Lunch in Deira, then the middle of the day indoors
Cross, eat in Deira for eight dollars, and then get out of the sun until four. What to eat in Dubai has the specifics.
The Deira souks, from 4pm
The Gold Souk. Several hundred shops in covered lanes, with window displays that are startling in sheer volume. This is a real market: gold sells by weight against the daily rate with a separate charge for the workmanship, and the price is negotiable on the workmanship rather than the metal. Walk it even with no intention of buying.
The Spice Souk. Smaller, and half of it now sells the same souvenirs as everywhere else. The other half is a working spice market: saffron, dried limes, frankincense and its burners, dried fruit, nuts and tea. Buy dried limes. They are the flavour of the whole Gulf and they weigh nothing.
The Perfume Souk. Oud, attars and Arabic perfume oils, sold by the tola from bottles. Overwhelming in the literal sense after ten minutes. Worth twenty.
The negotiating note: prices in all three are opening positions and walking away is a normal part of the exchange rather than a rebuke.
Dinner and the dhow wharfage
End the day on the Deira waterfront where the wooden cargo dhows tie up three deep, loading tyres, air conditioners, refrigerators and crates for Iran, Somalia, India and Pakistan by hand off the quay. Nothing about it is arranged for visitors. It is a working port, at night, doing exactly what this creek has done for two hundred years, and it is the best free thing in the city.
Day two: Al Shindagha, Deira and the water
Al Shindagha, 8am
At the mouth of the creek on the Bur Dubai side, this is the district where the ruling family lived and where the pearl trade was run from. It has been extensively restored into a museum quarter, and the restoration is heavy: much of what you see is new work on old footprints.
Take that as the frame and it is excellent. The Al Shindagha Museum runs across a series of restored houses covering the creek, the pearl trade, traditional medicine, perfume, and the making of the city, and it is well curated, air-conditioned and much better than the phrase “city museum” suggests. The Perfume House and the pearl diving sections are the ones to prioritise if you are short of time.
Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum House, the former ruler’s residence from 1896, is here too, with a photograph collection showing this whole coastline as sand within living memory.
Allow two to three hours. This is the best indoor morning in old Dubai.
Al Seef
The stretch of waterfront between Al Fahidi and Al Shindagha, redeveloped as a low-rise recreation of an old creekside quarter with restaurants, coffee, shops and a promenade.
Our honest verdict: it is a set piece and it is fine. Well made, pleasant to sit on in the evening, the water right there, and nobody should mistake it for the real thing next door. Come for a coffee or for luqaimat, the fried dough balls in date syrup. Do not give it a morning.
The Deira side, on foot
Cross back and walk Deira properly, away from the souks. The Naif area, the old residential streets, the cafeteria windows selling karak chai for well under a dollar, the fabric and hardware shops, the Ethiopian, Afghan and Iranian food. This is where the city’s actual working population lives and eats and it is not on anyone’s itinerary.
If you want a target rather than a wander: the Al Ahmadiya School, the city’s first, from 1912, restored and open, next to the Heritage House. Half an hour each, both quiet.
Sharjah, if you have the appetite
Twenty minutes up the coast and almost entirely ignored by visitors. The Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisation is the best museum of its kind in the region by a distance, the Sharjah Art Foundation runs a serious programme across restored courtyard buildings, and the heart of the old town has been properly rebuilt. Sharjah is dry, which is why the hotels are cheaper and the evenings quieter.
Half a day here turns two days of old Dubai into the best culture route in the UAE. See old Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi in 6 days.
The two days, summarised
| Morning | Middle of the day | Late afternoon and evening | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Al Fahidi at 8am, the textile souk, the abra across | Lunch in Deira, indoors until 4pm | Gold, spice and perfume souks, then the dhow wharfage at night |
| Day 2 | Al Shindagha museums, 2 to 3 hours | Al Seef for coffee, then indoors | Deira on foot, karak chai, dinner. Or Sharjah |
Total cost of the two days excluding meals and the hotel: under $30 a person, most of it museum entries.
Related
- What to eat in Dubai, and where
- Old Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi in 6 days
- Dubai for the first time
- What we would skip in Dubai
- All our Gulf trips
