On the Deira side of the city you will find most of the souks: including the well-known Gold Souk, the Old/Spice Souk, Deira Covered Souk (antiques, pots, textiles and other curios), Fish Souk, and Fruit and Vegetable Souk. As well, in the Gold Souk you will get plenty of offers for you to buy replica handbags or watches, if that is your thing. The amount of gold on display in the Gold Souk is overwhelming and I enjoyed looking at the various colourful spices on display in the Spice Souk.

Once we had satisfied our senses we headed over the creek to Bur Dubai on an abras. Riding an abra is a definite must do if you get to the city. Abras are small water taxis used to ferry up to 10-15 people across the river. Trip journeys cost just 50 fils (half a dirham or about 8p) and average about 5 minutes. Alternatively, you will have no shortage of offers for privately hired abras ranging from 30-50 dirham (£4.80-£7.80) for 30-minute journeys up and down the river depending on how good your bargaining skills are.

Over on the Bur Dubai side of the creek we entertained ourselves by visiting the Sheikh Saeed Al Maktoum’s House (the carefully restored house of Dubai’s former ruler and built in the traditional manner of the Gulf coast) and the Dubai Museum (based in the Al Faheidi Fort – this museum is definitely worth a visit. Displays are creative and at times interactive. At only 3 dirhams (50p) it is a bargain. The shop also contains some good items to take away as souvenirs. Both House and Museum were a welcome respite from the penetrating heat.

Next was the Bastakya. It is one of the oldest heritage sites in Dubai and mainly you can see one of the earliest forms of air-conditioning in the form of windtowers. However, more interestingly for us was the Bastakiya Art Café where we sampled some gorgeous teas and yummy sweet light Bakalava.

The rest of the day saw us visiting the Dubai Creek Park (where to our disappointment the cable car was not operating for the day but we did get an example of an irate – as far as we could tell as we couldn’t understand her – local woman who thought we were taking photos of her relatives/friends(?) when we were actually taking photos of the Dubai Creek & Yacht Golf club!) A quick visit to Wafi City rounded out the day.

The highlight of the day, however, was the Desert Safari with BBQ tour, offered on this occasion by Orient Tours. There are many tour operators that offer the same sort of package so it is worth shopping around for a good tour offer. This particular tour cost 230 dirham (£37) and began at around 4.30 in the afternoon and lasted until about 9.30pm. Orient Tours also filmed most of the tour so you can have some video and still footage for your memories (for an additional cost of course.)

The Desert Safari was basically a 4W-drive (to the sounds of Kenny G and Shakira) through the desert dunes, with a number of photo stops including a stop at a camel farm (be prepared to step in camel poo poo if you have any interest at all in getting up close and personal to the camels), to reach your final destination campsite. Once at the campsite, and before the scrumptious BBQ dinner, you have the chance to do some camel riding, sand boarding, shisha or get a free henna design on your hands or feet. Dinner was follwed by the finale of a traditional belly dancer and it is absolutely guaranteed that if you sit around the square … you will be pulled into the show!

If there is any tour that you must do in Dubai make this the one. The 4W-driving through the dunes was just crazy. Our driver was “the gun” as one of the Australians in the car exclaimed. I’m not sure if all the drivers were like him but he was mad crazy – even as we were picking up passengers from the respective hotels he was jumping curbs and generally causing quite a stir on the road. Seat belts were a must and boy did my brother and I feel it at the back. The drive through the dunes lasted for what seemed like forever and we were screaming with the joy of it. It was really fun to see the train of 16 4WDs challenging themselves on the dunes. As for the rest of the evening though both the camel riding and sand boarding were short it was sweet. I never realised just how high you sit when you’re on a camel. Driving through the dunes at night to return to the city presented a different challenge as tire pressures were increased, increasing the chances of getting bogged in the sand. It was just as exhilarating as driving during the day … maybe even more due to the lack of visibility. But as I said earlier, our driver was “the gun” and we had little worry about reaching our hotel safely (can’t say the same for our dinners ….)

I was in absolute awe of this hotel and its facilities. Situated as it is on the shores of the Arabian Gulf, it really is the ‘harbour of peace’ and despite the fact that the hotel was at maximum capacity the feeling during our entire stay was one of tranquility and sheer luxury. With a km of private beach, 3.7 km of working waterways with fully operational abras (traditional water taxis – I sat on one exactly where Johnny Depp reportedly sat), a bustling souk with 75 shops and 23 bars, cafes and restaurants plus another 45 restaurants, cafés and bars spread throughout the rest of the hotel, a spa, a healthclub, an arena, theatre and amphitheatre and conference hall – I really was regretting that we only had two days and two nights to enjoy and explore the facilities.

I could also go on about the opulence of our (basic!) room and how gorgeous it was (loved the fact we each had our own sink in the bathroom!) but you can just check out my pics here. We also had a nice view of the Burj Al Arab and could glimpse the ocean from our spacious balcony.

What’s great about the hotel was that even though our room wasn’t ready for early check-in, reception was more than ready with a welcome pack for early check-ins, including vouchers for the spa (if we were so inclined) and suggestions on what to do before the check-in time of 2pm. A golf buggy ride from the hotel would take you to almost anywhere in the neighbourhood, including to the Burj Al Arab (at appointed times unless you had reservations at one of the restaurants), to the Jumeirah beach hotel and to the Wild Wadi water park (entry price was actually included in our hotel rate!). The water park is pretty cool – rides are fairly advanced with many of the slides actually pushing you up hill. We couldn’t exactly work out how many rides there were in the park as there appeared to be one main circuit of rides which was itself a large network of tubes and it was kind of like a make your own choice as to which tube you wanted to follow. Difficult to explain until you’ve experienced it but we had a lot of fun, even returning later that night to experience it in the dark! There were other typical attractions such as a giant pool with generated waves and a giant speed slide. Interestingly there were two flowrider rides which simulated the experience of body-boarding and these rides were extremely popular. What I really liked was the cashless payment system where you can put credit on a watch-like device to pay for souvenirs, food and drink anywhere inside without having to tote around your wallet. We had a fab time at the park.

Our visit to the Jumeira Mosque was an enlightening one. Usually you would expect your guide to talk about the building and the architecture, instead what we got was a lesson in religion and culture. Our guide was an unusual person – a Spanish girl brought up in Switzerland but a Muslim for most of her adult life. She exhibited utmost patience and a very quirky sense of humour when giving her talk and no question was too silly for her to answer. It is a tour I would definitely recommend going on again and again.

I’d arranged for lunch at Al Muntaha in the Burj simply because I could not go to Dubai and not visit the hotel. You can visit the hotel for free if you are a guest at Mina A’ Salam but hours are restricted and I’m not sure what areas you could freely view. Eating lunch at the expensive (£140 for two courses for two without alcohol!) Al Muntaha was definitely an experience. The food wasn’t all that bad (definitely go for the Crab Linguini topped by two absolutely massive King Prawns) but what was impressive was the outstanding view (we could just make out one of The Palm developments and even The World) and the service. Our waiter definitely entertained us for our nearly two hours of sitting and eating in the restaurant.

The Burj is definitely impressive and luxurious to a T but personally I prefer the elegance and tranquillity of the Mina A’ Salam (and I definitely prefer the prices there!).

The rest of the day we relaxed pool and beach side and were entertained by the stream of helicopters flying into and out of the air pad at the top of the Burj.

Our final meal at the Al Muna restaurant was fitting – an amazing buffet of foodstuffs ranging from Arabian to Chinese to Indian to traditional western foods, not to mention the amazing desert bar (including fruit chocolate fondue and camel products!) saw us pigging out to the max. I’m thinking we had at least 7-8 courses – no wonder we couldn’t sleep that night!