Day 05 - We say we came for the ongoing Dubai World Expo. However, another reason is that the year 2021 coincides with an anniversary of sorts. Our initial arrival in Dubai occurred thirty years ago! Three decades is a long time anywhere but perhaps even more so in a rapidly developing city such as this one.Today, we basically crossed the road to see a part of town where we lived for five years. We did get on the Metro Red Line and rode north one stop. The ADCB station drops off and takes on passengers in one corner of Karama.
The neighbourhood is a famous part of Dubai but never carried much cachet. It was a commercial area and always housed a lot of the city's poorer expatriate workers; however, it was a perfect location for us for many reasons. Among the best were that it was a short drive to work and an all-around convenient location.
Nearly as soon as we stumbled out of the station, we came upon Al-Kifaf Apartments. We moved here in 1991 and stayed for four of the five years I worked at the UAE Higher Colleges of Technology. It consists of three floors with a swimming pool in a central courtyard. Actually, it is a place that I'd still be interested in staying in three, long decades later.
We continued walking and also located slightly more posh dwellings on the other side of Karama. At the time the Al-Tayer Building was brand new and I really liked our second-storey apartment as it was large and looked down on a swimming pool as well. We only noticed the number P256 above one of the two entrances. There were two different sections to this building as it was owned by brothers who shared in its construction. Jay and I did enter and talk to a receptionist to verify it was our former home for the final year in Dubai. He knew the name we mentioned but was surely not even born when we lived there.
There were changes we saw as we walked to every corner today. For example a public park used to be a parking lot. There's a new bus station and municipal market. On the whole though, things looked more run down. Given it's proximity to Bur Dubai it is a great area for new development. I guess that is happening in other stretches of desert though. However, here are some photos taken around Karama today:
We're still recovering from jetlag. After our body clocks have shifted the 12 hours difference to what we were living, I'm sure we'll get farther afield. After all, we got free season passes to the Dubai Expo back when we were first considering doing our one-month stopover.