Guide · 5 minute read
Al Seef is a restored waterfront along the Bur Dubai bank of Dubai Creek — coral-stone buildings and wind towers built recently to look old, lit after dark and free to walk. It is the easiest of the four dhow cruise boarding points to reach by car, and the only one with parking, cafés and somewhere to wait.
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Al Seef is not old. It is a development completed in the last decade, built in coral stone with wind towers and narrow lanes to evoke the Creek-side Dubai of the mid-twentieth century. Some people find that a problem; most do not, once they are walking it.
What makes it work is that it sits on the actual Creek, next to the actual abra station, opposite the actual working wharfage. It is a reconstruction placed exactly where the original was, which is a very different thing from a themed development on reclaimed land.
Two reasons. The lighting is warm and low and it hides the newness of the stonework, which daylight does not. And the Creek itself is a night place — the souks opposite are busiest after dark, the abras are lit, and the cargo dhows are loading.
In daylight between May and September it is also simply too hot to walk. Al Seef has almost no shade along the water, by design.
This is the practical reason most visitors end up here. Al Seef is where the Bur Dubai-side dhow dinner cruises board, from about 19:30 for a 20:00 sailing, at around AED 119 per person including a buffet.
It is the easiest of Dubai's four dhow boarding points to arrive at: there is on-site parking, the promenade is lit and level, and there are cafés to sit in if you are early. The Deira boarding areas have none of that — they are a kerb on a busy road.
Come thirty minutes before boarding rather than ten. The walk along the promenade is worth the time on its own, and it is the difference between a rushed arrival and an evening.
Walk the promenade end to end, which takes about fifteen minutes each way. Then, if you have longer, take the abra across to Deira for a dirham, walk the length of the wharfage, and come back — that is about forty minutes and it is the best thing you can do near a boarding point anywhere in Dubai.
Al Fahidi historical district is a ten-minute walk inland: genuinely old, narrow-laned and almost empty at night.
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