Dubai

As promised, here are some of the photos of Dubai. We really could have spent every waking moment taking pictures of all the skyscrapers because there are THAT many and they're ALL over the top. No one builds boring things in Dubai. That would be... boring. And since there's money from somewhere as plentiful as the sand, why not build a few hundred more and make them even more extravagant than the last. Can you tell I'm a little jaded about the whole place.
In case you didn't feel welcome in Dubai, there's a giant sign saying welcome on the main beach. It's seriously a huge sign. My camera doesn't have great zoom and you can still read it all the way from our hotel 1/2 mile away.
This is just one of the hotels under construction next to the Marriott. See, it would be immensely boring to just build a regular rectangular building. A curvy one will be much cooler.
And let's fill the hotels with rooms the size of apartments. This was our living room/dining room. It's good we're not living in our tiny DC apartment anymore or we'd have had a hard time leaving all this luxurious space.
The view from the other side of our suite. Literally everywhere you look there is construction.
Skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. And this is only the Marina District of Dubai. You drive almost a half hour on interstates surrounded by similar amounts of skyscrapers to get to downtown Dubai. The water is beautiful here though and since it's a planned community it's pretty cool. If you're not on the beach you're likely on the marina.

Taylor was excited to visit because he says this is the time to visit a boom town. In 20 years he wants to go back and see if the place is still alive or if it's a ghost town. Right now all the skyscrapers are basically empty and they're hoping "If we build it, they will come." We'll see. Maybe all these amazing building will look "so 2010" in 20 years. Hard to believe now though with how impressive they are.