Daily life in Dubai involves cafes & restaurants and malls – as well as the attractions of the beach and the sun. Our weekend is generally Friday & Saturday though some of the more old fashioned local companies stick to Thursday afternoon and Friday. Friday is like a European Sunday, mostly. Family & friends, eating, drinking and visiting. Saturdays are for shopping and chores.
A huge amount of social life for those of my age group is around bars and restaurants. Good food is incredibly cheap and the choices are endless. Because in practice only hotels have drinks licences the hotels have many more bars and restaurants than a European one would have. Even the Metropolitan where I lived for a long time (4-5 star and a bit run down these days) had a pub, Tex-Mex, Chinese, Indian, Thai-fish market, Italian, Japanese, nightclub and outdoor bar plus snacks at the pool. And a 24/7 coffee shop type restaurant/cafe. Imagine the choices in one of the very big modern places.
Plus streets and malls full of eateries from local fast food (shawarma) to Japanese, dim sum, Lebanese, Georgian, Persian, Russian, German, Macdonalds, Pizza Hut or any other chain you can think of like Dunkin Donuts or Burger King etc, coffee shops from local tea shops with two tables on the pavement to Starbucks and with apparently a preponderance of Canadian ones (Caribou & Second Cup come to mind), shisha bars, French Patisseries and deli sandwiches. The list goes on. But it can be a wonderful experience. And even the tiny backstreet place that we Europeans get so nervous of are scrupulously clean and incredibly friendly.
Most expats miss out on these little places sticking to the hotels and malls. But you really can’t beat a little café with a cup of Turkish coffee and a bunch of elderly Indians who speak better English than I do, endless gossip and a view on a hustling cityscape. It makes all the aggravation of work just disappear.
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