Dubai Creek in one evening

Start on the Deira side, about five

The spice souk first, because it is smaller and closes earlier in feel if not in hours. It is a few covered lanes of sacks — saffron, dried limes, frankincense — and twenty minutes is enough unless you are buying.

Then the gold souk, five minutes' walk north, which is a different scale entirely: hundreds of shopfronts, windows stacked floor to ceiling. Whether or not you intend to buy anything, it is worth walking the length of it once.

The abra across, AED 1

The abras are wooden passenger boats that have crossed the Creek on fixed routes for decades, and they still do it for one dirham, paid in cash to the man who moves between the benches while you are under way.

The crossing takes about five minutes and it is, per dirham, the best thing in Dubai. You sit low, at water level, with cargo dhows on one side and the Bur Dubai waterfront ahead. There is no schedule — the boat leaves when it is full, which is usually within a few minutes.

• Fare: AED 1, cash, collected on board
• Crossing: about 5 minutes, no timetable — leaves when full
• Routes: Deira Old Souk ↔ Bur Dubai, and Al Sabkha ↔ Dubai Old Souk
• Runs from early morning until around midnight

The wharfage, which is the real thing

Along the Deira bank, cargo dhows tie up two and three deep and load by hand: sacks, tyres, air conditioners, refrigerators, all stacked on open decks and bound for Iran, Somalia, India and beyond. Crews live aboard. It runs every evening and it is not a performance.

It is the single most interesting thing on the Creek and most visitors walk past it because it looks like industry rather than a sight. Walk the length of it slowly.

Al Seef at dusk

On the Bur Dubai bank, Al Seef is a restored waterfront of coral-stone buildings and wind towers, lit after dark, with cafés and a promenade. It was built recently to look old and it is more convincing at night than in daylight.

It is also the most comfortable place on the Creek to sit for half an hour, and it has parking — which the Deira boarding areas do not.

Finish with the dinner cruise

Creek dhow dinner cruises board around 20:00 or 20:30 and run two hours with a buffet, from AED 99 a head — the cheapest dinner cruise in Dubai. The route takes you back past everything you have just walked, from the water and at night.

Sit on the upper deck. The lower deck is where the buffet is, but the view is through glass, and the whole point of doing the walk first is that you now recognise what you are passing.