Today Dubai is flashy, fun and slightly surreal. Famous for its sand, sun and shops, it was once a quiet city of houses with plaster and coral courtyards built by Persian traders and palm-leaf huts, a refuge for Bedouin fishermen and pearl divers. Today, glittering new skyscrapers reflect the image of mosques and dominate old Dubai [excerpt from the Lonely Planet website].

Dubai is the city born from nothing, in less than 40 years from a small fishing village it has become one of the world's economic powers on a par with New York, London or Tokyo. In Dubai everything is possible, even skiing in the middle of the desert, even ice skating in a shopping mall, even admiring from the highest panoramic terrace in the world not one but two artificial islands in the shape of a palm tree. Luxury hotels, futuristic skyscrapers, seven-lane roads and many places, buildings and palaces that seem to have come out of a science fiction film. But there is also the classic Dubai, that of the spice souk, that of the Creek, the old river that was once the soul of the city and that today is still crossed aboard the Abra, the classic local boats. A mix of cultures unique in the world, where traditions blend with the present, where the impossible becomes possible. Welcome to Dubai, welcome to the future.