Dubai Shopping Festival!

I was telling someone at work that I desperately needed new shoes, since most of my workaday zapatos have been beat up by the dust, heat and sweat, and made worse every day by the sand road in front of our house. It's gotten to a point where I carry my shoes to the car with me, and slip them on once I'm in, to prevent sand from getting down in with my toes. You'll see the wear and tear especially on heels, where the sand sneaks in and separates the heel from the shoe.

At any rate, I've managed to live in this country for 5 months without buying more than one pair of shoes (for a fancy event, so they don't even count), so I figure I'm long overdue for a good bit of malling action, with the goal of finding 2 (or 3 or 4) new pairs. Even the pairs I bought in the US for weddings and special evenings are biting the dust, literally, as those are the shoes most women wear here on a daily basis. The only pair I may get a few more months out of are made by Dansko, and by the time that happens I hope to be in the US where I can pick them up again at Nordstrom.

And just as I thought we'd done most of the major touristy things in Dubai, I consulted with my colleagues about where to go for shoes and they said, 'don't go yet, just wait for the shopping festival, it starts in two weeks'. At this point I stopped in my tracks, heart rate accelerating, and just stood there, waiting for more.

Shopping festival, I thought, hmmm. When I think festival, I think corn dogs, kitchy art booths, kiddie rides and overpriced sodas. But with the word shopping attached, it takes on a whole new form, a kind of grown-up dream land with giant discount signs and wall-sized price tags and jeans in every imaginable size. Sure enough, as I stood there soaking in the additional intel from my friends, my personal shopping fantasy was realized and described by my colleagues as a month-long event, sanctioned by the government, enticing hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists with deep discounts, crazy quantities and prices, mad-dash 10 minute sales in stores, as well as mall-events for kids such as camel rides and falconry demonstrations and clowns (it was a real festival after all). The malls (and boy are there ever malls in the UAE) and even the smaller shops participate, and the offers change daily, so if you're a real shopper, you can set out fresh each day, to get a different kind of deal on every outing.

I've only been out once so far, and I aquired a 59 dirham pair of jeans ($19) from H&M, a 34 Dirham red-fancy-leather belt ($12) and a gorgeous cashmere sweater for 69 dirhams ($21) from a store called Promod. I am told that you should pace yourself, because even as stores run out of some stock, they replenish others and the discounts deepen as the festival goes on. This year it ends on February 15 and I intend to go out several times before then. My goal: acquire belts, shoes and handbags, replace my 1990's out-of-style work pants and blazers, perhaps buy a new CD or two, and get Rosie some shirts where her belly doesn't hang out. If only the festival extended to hair salons and restaurants, I'd probably never come home.