Dubai

I've been to Dubai four times and my relationship with it is complicated and entirely affectionate. It is a city of implausible superlatives — the tallest building, the largest mall, the indoor ski slope in the desert, the palm-shaped island visible from space — and it commits to all of them with a straight face, which is either deeply funny or deeply impressive depending on your mood, and usually both simultaneously.

I flew on Emirates from London Heathrow, obviously. Business class, because if you're going to Dubai you may as well do the flat bed and the bar and the menu designed by Gary Rhodes. The A380 upper deck, departed at 9pm, arrived at Dubai International at 7am. Emirates Terminal 3 at DXB is itself a destination — four kilometres of terminal, marble floors, a biometric immigration system that cleared me in 90 seconds, an arrivals hall the size of a small town. Taxi to the hotel: 30 minutes, fixed rate from the rank, no tip expected, excellent.

I stayed at the Bulgari Resort Dubai on Jumeirah Bay Island for the first week — an Italian-designed, Bulgari-branded island resort accessible by bridge, 101 villas and suites, a marina full of yachts I didn't own, a beach that faced the Burj Khalifa skyline across the water. The Il Ristorante — Niko Romito's restaurant in the hotel — served pasta I'd fly back specifically for, a carbonara that arrived in a Parmesan wheel, which is exactly as theatrical as it sounds and exactly as good.

Week one was the landmarks, unashamedly. The Burj Khalifa is 828 metres tall and you should take the At the Top Sky experience to level 148, not level 124, because the extra height matters psychologically. I booked the 6am slot and had the observation deck to myself as the sun rose over the Gulf and the shadow of the tower stretched across the entire city. At ground level the Dubai Fountain performs every evening outside the Dubai Mall — choreographed jets of water reaching 150 metres, set to Arabic music, best viewed from the bridge or from a lakeside table at a restaurant.

The Gold Souk and Spice Souk in Deira are old Dubai — the city as it existed before the glass towers, narrow alleyways roofed in corrugated iron, jewellery shops piled floor to ceiling with 24-carat gold, the spice traders with their sacks of saffron and dried lemon and sumac. I took an abra — a traditional wooden water taxi, AED 1 — across the Dubai Creek and ate a late lunch at Bu Qtair, a hole-in-the-wall fish restaurant in Jumeirah that fishermen have been eating at for fifty years, grilled hammour and shrimp in a paper tray, the best seafood in the city, nothing on the menu over AED 40.

Week two: the desert. I booked a two-day trip with Arabian Adventures into the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve — a protected area east of the city where oryx and gazelle roam the dunes. Dune bashing in a Land Cruiser (genuinely terrifying, genuinely brilliant), camel trekking at sunset, dinner in a Bedouin camp with falconry and fire and a sky full of stars that Dubai's light pollution hides completely. Sleeping in a luxury camp tent with the silence of the desert outside — the most unexpected pleasure of the whole trip.

Week three I explored the new neighbourhoods: Alserkal Avenue in Al Quoz, a warehouse arts district full of galleries and the best independent café in Dubai (Nightjar Coffee, excellent flat white). The Dubai Frame on Sheikh Zayed Road — a 150-metre picture frame with a glass-floored bridge at the top connecting Old Dubai on one side with New Dubai on the other, corny and magnificent. Global Village, the seasonal outdoor festival where 90 countries each have a pavilion — I walked the entire thing over six hours and ate my way through half of Asia.

I flew home on Emirates again, the same terminal, the same flat bed, the same bar. Outside, the city blazed below us as we banked west over the Gulf. It is genuinely unlike anywhere else.