The Dubai Souks are over 100 years old! We had to take a boat across the Dubai Creek from the Grand Souk to the other souks which was faster than car because we avoided traffic and we just cut across the Dubai Creek rather than going around it to find a bridge. These Abra boats were an old way locals used to get across Dubai Creek before people had cars.
The Grand Souk
The Grand Souk had a bit of everything from all the other souks. We got headscarves there so we could enter the Grand Mosque as it was required for our heads to be covered. We also got Dubai Chocolate! We needed to barter at the places to get good prices. Before we got here we read that store owners color code bags to alert the other owners how good of a negotiator you are. If we got a green bag that meant we didn’t even try, white bag means we bartered okay and red bag means we were great and got a great price. Our dad got a red bag after negotiating for our 3 headscarves where they asked for 130 AED each and he got 3 for 100 AED!
The Gold Souk
It was really busy with lots noise. We did not get anything from the souk but we just wanted to look around. It was cool because of how much gold there was, there was a lot!
The Gold Souk is famous for its amount of shimmering gold jewelry. It holds to over 380 shops, and has the world’s largest gold ring, weighing 64 kg, and would cost approximately $3 million! The Gold Souk was built in the early 1900s and is still open today.
Gold is:
- A noble metal, meaning that it does not rust or lose its colors or shine
- The only yellow metal
- One of the heaviest and densest of all the metals, a cubic foot would weigh more than half a ton
- Able to melt at 1064.43° and boils at 2856.1°
The Spice Souk
There was approximately 150 stalls with so many different spices we could practically get every single spice in the world! It smelled very nice because of all the spices. The sellers were very pushy, and annoying. They kept telling us to come in their shop and shoving things in our faces, it was very overwhelming.
They also have a Perfume Souk and Textile Souks but we did not go there.
Dinner Cruise
That night we went on another traditional boat called the Dhow boat for a dinner cruise. There was a buffet, and I LOVE buffets! They served apple juice, water, Pepsi, rice, noodles, chicken, fish, vegetables, salads, Indian dishes and more and for dissert we got brownies!
There was also a traditional Tanoura dance performance. It was very beautiful because we were in the marina so we saw all the buildings lit up at night.
Brooklyn trying out the dance
6 Comments
By Oma A
I don’t like when people get pushy in markets either. I remember in Africa I ran into that a few times. It would be very interesting to see all the different spices.
By Rylee
I didn’t like it either.
By David
Thank you Rylee, very good job . So interesting about the gold in the market, and taking a dinner cruise
By Rylee
Thank you!
By The Duecks
Great job Rylee! I’m not surprised your dad bartered a good deal, he’s a stubborn one lol. Toby thought yoir section on the gold was very intefesting, Auntie Tammy would love to smell the spice souk! Dubai chocolate is a big thing here now, we want to try it sometime. What did you think of it? How did it compare to other chocolate?
And great job Brooklyn with the dance! The dinner cruise sounds like it was fun.
By Rylee
I thought it was delicious, and I thought it was better than plain chocolate because it had pistachio kanafa filling. I got to try both dark and light Dubai Chocolate. The dinner cruise was fun!