United Arab Emirates

🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates

Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi is the quieter, wealthier, more culturally ambitious sibling of Dubai. The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is one of the great religious buildings of the modern era. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is the most surprising museum in the Gulf. And the Corniche — 8 km of seafront boulevard — gives the city a human scale that its tower forests suggest it shouldn't have. Three days here covers the mosque, the museum, Ferrari World and a desert safari.

🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates

Dubai

Dubai is the most audacious urban experiment of the 21st century: a desert city-state of 3.5 million people that went from a fishing village (population 60,000 in 1960) to a global financial capital and tourist destination in 60 years, building the world's tallest tower, the world's largest shopping mall, the world's largest indoor ski slope, and the world's most expensive hotel (Burj Al Arab, seven stars) in the process. The emirate receives 17 million tourists annually and has displaced many European capitals as a stopover and destination in its own right. Yet Dubai's remarkable aspect is not the scale of its ambition but its genuine coexistence of the ancient and the futuristic: the Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood (the 19th-century wind-tower quarter) and the Dubai Creek spice and gold souks are 2km from the Burj Khalifa, and the desert is 20 minutes from the city centre. Three days covers the skyline, the souks, the desert and the extraordinary waterfront.

🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates

Sharjah

Sharjah is the third-largest emirate in the UAE (population 1.8 million) and the cultural capital of the Arab world — the emirate designated UNESCO World Book Capital in 2019 and Arab Cultural Capital in 1998, the only emirate in the UAE where alcohol is completely prohibited, and the emirate most distinguished from Dubai (30 km south) by its explicit commitment to Islamic culture, arts education and heritage preservation over commercial development and nightlife. Sharjah was ruled for 44 years (1972-2022) by Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi — a scholar with a PhD in Gulf history from the University of Exeter, who has written 64 books, built 17 museums, established the Sharjah International Book Fair (the third-largest book fair in the world after Frankfurt and London, held annually in November, drawing 2.5 million visitors) and designated the entire Heritage Area of Al Araby as a protected historic district. The Sharjah Heritage Area and the Sharjah Art Foundation (the most significant public art institution in the Arabian Gulf — the biennial Sharjah Biennial has been held since 1993 and has launched the careers of major artists from the Arab world, Africa and South Asia; the Sharjah Art Foundation operates 6 exhibition spaces in the renovated historic district) together create the most coherent and intellectually serious cultural tourism offering in the UAE. Sharjah borders Dubai to the south and Fujairah on the Indian Ocean coast to the east — the emirate is unusual in that it has territory on both the Arabian Gulf coast and the Indian Ocean coast, separated by the Hajar Mountains. The Blue Souk (the Central Souk of Sharjah — the 1970s twin-towered shopping centre built in the traditional wind tower style, housing over 600 shops specialising in gold, carpets, antiques and spices) is the most-visited single shopping destination in Sharjah.