Zabeel Park

This guide to Zabeel Park in Dubai goes back to December 2005, when it opened as the Gulf's first technology-themed recreational park, built on what had been bare desert scrubland at a cost of half a billion dirhams. You'll hear about Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum's opening-day speech, the roughly twenty-two thousand visitors who came through the gates on day one, and the three technology zones built to teach ideas as much as offer recreation. Look for the more than three thousand palm trees planted across its hundred and seventeen acres.