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The new Ireland

Ireland may be the nicest place to live in the world according to recent reports – but since May 1st a veritable deluge of people have arrived from Eastern Europe. Polish registered cars now seem to be the most common non-Irish car on the roads. The numbers coming to Ireland seem to mainly come from Poland – with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia following behind.

And they come to work – and the Irish economy seems to be handling it all quite well. I have already started learning some Polish and Russian. It might come in handy.

Here is a photo of how much Ireland has changed since May 1st – and I think changing for the better.

Baltimore, West Cork

Baltimore is the town in West Cork – at the very south west tip of Ireland. If you keep going from here you end up in Canada. It has become very popular for building holiday homes as this photo shows.

The weather isn’t great in the winter either.

Burj Al Arab, Dubai

I went to the Madinat hotel the other night, after my few hours inside the Burj al Arab. The Madinat is actually 3 hotels, interlinked by a network of canals. Boats take guests to restaurants, bars and shops in the hotel. It is unique as far as I can tell.

Here is the Burj at night, taken from inside the Madinat hotel.

Here is a view of the massive Madinat complex, taken from the SkyView Bar inside the Burj.
Here is the Jumeirah complex view from the SkyView Bar.

Jumeirah Mosque

Of course being an Arab country, there are mosques everywhere, this is the rather nice one on Jumeirah Road. And in case you are curious about the wealth of this country, just outside the picture was parked two Porsche Cayenne Turbo SUV’s, one black and one white, and an Escalade had just driven by two minutes before. Oh and a nice red Ferrari, what looked like a 360 Modena, sped by just before as well.

Jumeirah Mosque

Beach in Dubai

This is one of the many beaches in Dubai, but one of the public ones. Many of the hotels own private beaches where you pay for entry etc.

You can get a lovely view of the skyscrapers on Sheikh Zayed Road from the beach.

Sheikh Zayed Road view from beach

Here are the lovely clear, and very warm waters of the Persian Gulf:

Persian Gulf

Emirates Towers at night

I tried some longer exposure night photos (without tripod), its hit and miss really. This one turned out reasonably well.

Emirates Towers at night

Burj al Arab at sunset yesterday

I spent the day at the Wild Wadi waterpark beside the Burj Al Arab yesterday. I managed to take a rather nice sunset picture from the top of the “Jumeriah Sceriah” waterslide. It’s a 4 storey high waterslide. And its pretty scary too.

Burj al Arab

Oh and I will be going for afternoon tea at the Burj later in the week. Hehe.

UAE currency: Dirham

For those of you curious about Dubai and the United Arab Emirates, the local currency is the Dirham. At current exchange rates 100 Dirhams is worth about 22 euros/20 US dollars. Here is a photo of some of the currency:

Dirhams

Financial Services Center, Dubai, UAE

The massive archway on Sheikh Zayed road is taking shape, here is a photo of the Financial Services Center, side view. (165k)

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Arrived in Dubai

Well I made it to Dubai last night, here is a rather bad night picture of Sheikh Zayed Road. Yes I did have a few pints on me at the time. And bleedin hell its hot. I got a taxi last night with some Syrian guy, we drove past the American Hospital, and I half jokingly said that Osama Bin Laden had stayed there at some point before September 11. (Conspiracy theory alert). The friendly Syrian taxi driver was not sure whether to believe me, but then I said he had definately stayed there. And the Syrians reply? ”Allah akhbar, allah akhbar Osama bin Laden good man.”

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