Lady’s Guide to Spending Easter Weekend in Dubai

Today I want to share about spending Easter weekend in Dubai. Easter is a time to reflect on death and rebirth, the old and the new, and the chocolate carbs versus the jelly bean carbs. My trip to Dubai was Easter personified.

Easter Weekend in Dubai

The emirate was a blend of old souks and new mega-malls, the death of an oil-driven economy and the rebirth of Dubai as a playground for westerners and frenzied skyscraper construction.

As for the carbs, the variety of gastronomic delights in Dubai had me ignoring nutrition all together.

My boyfriend and I traveled to the Middle East to spend Easter weekend in Dubai with friends.

We stayed at Le Royal Meridien Beach Resort and Spa and were excited to explore a part of the United Arab Emirates that’s experienced a renaissance in recent decades.

Old Dubai

With rebirth comes new beginnings, but ambitious Dubai didn’t bother tearing down old buildings to make way for new ones. Dubai consists of two parts, an old city and a contemporary one.

In Bur Dubai and Deira, the older parts of the emirate where I spent the first two days of Easter weekend in Dubai, many of the buildings were of the 20th-century modern style.

Small alleys between them were strewn with unidentified electrical wiring and leaking water.

To cross Dubai Creek one had to ride in a small dhow-like boat called an abra, as there were very few bridges spanning the water.

That said, the old city had its charm. Walking through the Spice Souk and Gold Souk made me feel as if I had stepped back in time, and the beautiful Bastakiya Quarter housed amazing art galleries and cafes.

New Dubai

Over in New Dubai, every building was sparkling new and still under construction. Everywhere I looked there were cranes and uniformed construction crews working long hours to complete yet another skyscraper.

It was amazing to drive through the city over Easter weekend in Dubai and see buildings that looked finished on the outside but were completely vacant on the inside.

Here too there were souks, but these were of the 21st-century variety.

The contemporary Souk Madinat Jumeirah was complete with Vegas-like Venetian canals and food courts, and the Mall of the Emirates is known worldwide for its indoor ski slope.

So much for the little desert outpost. Spending Easter weekend in Dubai showed me they’ve built a megacity on a global scale.

Dining and Nightlife in Dubai

Speaking of large scale, Dubai’s dining and nightlife scenes were impressive, particularly for a place where alcohol is only served in hotels and the culture is fairly conservative.

We ate one night at a restaurant known for its gastronomic inventiveness (sweetbreads with mango cellophane, anyone?). Afterwards went out to Buddha Bar in Dubai.

On another night we joined friends at an outdoor bar with great views of the famous Burj Al Arab and then went dancing until 3am. It was a fun way to spend our evenings during Easter weekend in Dubai.

Easter in Dubai

While Dubai has been reborn in an architectural, gastronomic, and economic sense, I was sad to see that it’s still disappointingly behind in a human rights sense.

The skyscrapers are being built on the backs of poorly-paid foreign laborers who toil under abysmal conditions, and the rights of women aren’t great either.

At the end of Easter weekend in Dubai, I was appalled to learn I couldn’t sit with my boyfriend in an exit row on my Gulf Air flight, as “ladies and children” aren’t allowed to sit in such places. Easter is about rebirth, but some old habits die hard.

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