During our guest's two week stay, we spent a 3-day weekend in Dubai and one of the adventures there was the Global Village. We had heard about the Global Village since moving here more than 2 years ago, but this was the first time we had visited. An adventure for sure!
Global Village is part theme park and part shopping opportunity. Think of Disney's Epcot center with a little less educational exhibit but a lot more authentic. The grounds are huge and have pavilions designated to various countries of the world. In fact the place is so huge that we only saw a small percentage of the countries even though we were there for over 3 hours! Here are a few photos.
This photo gives you a sense of the crowds. The place was mad! It was a three day holiday weekend, which made a bad situation worse. It took us almost an hour to find parking! The bright pavilion in the background is the one for Yemen.
And here's a view of Egypt. Each pavilion is filled with goods, foods and sometimes performances from that region. Interesting to see what's important to each country and to see how similar they sometimes are.
A beautiful lantern and glass store. This was also in the Arabia area of the village - I didn't see that it was specific to any country.
Saudi Arabia pavilion - amazing dates and Arabic coffee. And they let you sample all kinds of things. We tried a bunch of different date varieties, coffee, a date cake, some figs ... yum.
The village has a canal running through it and you could take little boat rides from one side to the other. The line was just too long for us to even consider it.
Some performers in the Lebanon pavilion, I think.
I think this was also Lebanon - jams, honey and pickled vegetables.
Performers in the Egypt pavilion.
There was also a small midway with a huge Farris wheel and a few other rides.
It wasn't just Arabic countries as my photos suggest. We also saw Africa and China on the side of the village where we explored. There was a whole other section we didn't even get to that had USA, UK and a bunch of other European and Asian countries. I'm sure there was also something from South American somewhere. If I can ever convince Brian to go again, we'll have to check out the other section. (As you can imagine, huge crowds and shopping wasn't exactly his idea of fun.)
The Global Village is all outdoors so only open from Nov to Mar each year.
Global Village is part theme park and part shopping opportunity. Think of Disney's Epcot center with a little less educational exhibit but a lot more authentic. The grounds are huge and have pavilions designated to various countries of the world. In fact the place is so huge that we only saw a small percentage of the countries even though we were there for over 3 hours! Here are a few photos.
It wasn't just Arabic countries as my photos suggest. We also saw Africa and China on the side of the village where we explored. There was a whole other section we didn't even get to that had USA, UK and a bunch of other European and Asian countries. I'm sure there was also something from South American somewhere. If I can ever convince Brian to go again, we'll have to check out the other section. (As you can imagine, huge crowds and shopping wasn't exactly his idea of fun.)
The Global Village is all outdoors so only open from Nov to Mar each year.
Brilliant post! Your blog has motivated me to visit Dubai with my family. Global Village Dubai would be the perfect choice for our winter vacation. I will get a Dubai Visa from UK for our family and spend some lovely time in the Global city of Dubai.
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