Guide · 9 minute read
Al Seef is a restored waterfront along the Bur Dubai bank of Dubai Creek, and it is a night place. 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.
By Roshan Shriwastav · Published
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.
Worth knowing what you are looking at, because the details are accurate even if the buildings are not old. The style is Creek-side Dubai of roughly the 1930s to 1950s, and the two features that define it are coral stone and wind towers.
Coral stone, blocks cut from the reef and bound with gypsum, was the local building material before concrete, and it is why the older surviving buildings in Al Fahidi have that porous, sand-coloured texture. The barjeel, or wind tower, is the square open-topped structure on the roofs: an early form of air conditioning that catches breeze from any direction and funnels it down into the room below. In a courtyard house they worked genuinely well, dropping the internal temperature by several degrees.
Al Seef reproduces both faithfully. The wind towers here are decorative rather than functional, which is the honest difference between this and Al Fahidi ten minutes inland, where they are the real thing on real buildings.
It is worth knowing that the development has two distinct sections and most visitors only see one.
The heritage section (the coral stone, the wind towers, the narrow lanes) runs along the Creek at the northern end and is the part everybody photographs. The southern end is a contemporary section: glass, steel, a modernist take on the same waterfront, with a different set of restaurants and a very different feel.
They are joined along the promenade and the transition is abrupt rather than blended. Whether that works is a matter of taste, but the practical point is that if you have walked the old-looking part and thought that was all of it, there is another fifteen minutes of waterfront to the south.
The cafés along the water are the reason to arrive early, and they are priced for the location rather than being a bargain. Expect Marina rather than Deira prices. The Creek-facing terraces are the ones worth having; the inland lanes are cooler in summer but you lose the view entirely.
The shops are a mix of small heritage-styled retail, artisan and souvenir outlets, and a few chains. It is browsing rather than shopping, and nothing here competes on price with the souks across the water, which are five minutes and one dirham away, and where you should buy anything you actually want.
The genuinely good move is to eat lightly here before a dhow cruise rather than properly, because dinner is included on the boat and the buffet opens twenty minutes after sailing.
The Green Line metro stops at Al Fahidi and Sharaf DG, both about ten minutes' walk. On-site parking is the real advantage though, and it is the reason most people arrive by car. It is the only Dubai dhow boarding point where you can park and walk to the boat without crossing a road.
From Dubai Marina, allow forty minutes by taxi in ordinary traffic and considerably more on a Friday evening. From Downtown it is fifteen to twenty minutes. Whichever way you come, send the driver a pin rather than the name. Bur Dubai is large and the Creek frontage is long.
Best arrival is around six in the evening between October and April: enough light left to see the buildings, then the transition to the lighting while you are already here. In summer, come after eight, and expect the promenade to be uncomfortably warm before that.
There are four dhow boarding points in Dubai and two of them are on the Creek. Al Seef and the Deira jetties run on the same water and are a completely different arrival experience.
Deira is the cheaper cruise, from AED 99 against AED 119, and the boats are older and more traditional. The boarding, though, is a kerb on a busy road with several jetties within a few hundred metres of each other, difficult parking, and nowhere to wait. It is where taxi drivers most often deliver people to the wrong place.
Al Seef costs AED 20 more, boards from a lit level promenade with on-site parking and cafés, and puts a newer boat under you. For a first dhow cruise, with family, or with anyone who would rather not stand on a kerb, that AED 20 is the best value on the Creek.
A restored waterfront on the Bur Dubai bank of Dubai Creek, built in coral stone with wind towers in a traditional style. It is free to walk, lit after dark, and sits next to the abra station opposite the Deira souks.
Yes. The promenade and the lanes are free to walk at any hour. Only the cafés, shops and the dhow cruises cost anything.
Newly built, within the last decade, in a traditional style. What makes it convincing is the location. It sits on the real Creek beside the real abra station and opposite the working cargo wharfage.
Along the Al Seef waterfront near the abra station, from about 19:30 for a 20:00 sailing. It is the only one of Dubai's four dhow boarding points with on-site parking.
The AED 1 abra to the Deira souks and the dhow wharfage, and Al Fahidi historical district about ten minutes inland, which is genuinely old and almost empty at night.
A barjeel: the square open-topped structure on old rooftops. It catches breeze from any direction and funnels it down into the room below, an early form of air conditioning that could drop internal temperature by several degrees. Al Seef's are decorative; Al Fahidi's are real.
Al Seef costs about AED 20 more and gives you on-site parking, a lit level promenade, cafés to wait in and a newer boat. Deira is cheaper with more traditional boats, but boarding is a kerb on a busy road with difficult parking.
Less so. Daylight shows the newness of the stonework that warm night lighting hides, and there is almost no shade along the water by design, which makes it genuinely too hot between May and September.
Leave the date and roughly how many of you there are and we will come back with the boats that are free and what each costs. No deposit at this stage.
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