Fri Apr 15th Dubai: Arrived late tonight – in the buzzingly busy world's largest airport – after a long, 20-hr flight from Newark with stops in Germany (but with gold-plated service on Lufthansa Business (I used miles and upgraded!)). Somehow found the Cunard driver & happily asleep by midnight in a hotel quite close to Port Rashid, the harbor. As if planned, the QE2 is all but outside my window. The driver was quick to point out the mostly dark liner. She is, however, and like a great lady wearing nothing more than a gleaming, bejeweled necklace, strung with long strands of lights – like cruise ships such as the Swedish America Line used to do. No other lights or signs of life. The lights are fixed from the bow to the mast, then across to the otherwise unlit funnel and, then in double strands, to the stern. A strip of vague light runs along the Boat Deck. In ways, it was just the unmistakable silhouette of the great QE2.



Dubai itself is very much alive even close to midnight: traffic, lights, hotels and restaurants and clubs, the shimmering skyline. It is my third visit (the first in 2008) and, as a businessman-seatmate on the inward flight mentioned, Dubai has "world domination schemes". Once a sleepy, backwater city-state, Dubai now has the world's largest building (the Burj Khalifa), the world's tallest hotel (the Marriott Dubai), the world's largest artificial island (the Palm Jumeirah) and the world's biggest shopping mall.

aerial-view-of-burj-khalifa-dubai.jpg




But back to the QE2 – she is all but outside my window, a 10-minute walk away (but fenced in) and altogether much like seeing an old friend.