I worked at The National for more than a year without setting foot in Dubai, which is about an hour’s drive up the coast of the UAE. More than a few people here thought that was just plain strange and, yes, I concede it was. A little bit.

It would be like taking a job at, say, Boston and never getting around to going to New York City — the more famous and glamorous city. (Even though Abu Dhabi is the national capital and the true source of power in the UAE; making it more like Washington DC would be to New York, except if it were a one-hour drive away.)

But we had reasons not to go.

Let’s start with the concept that if we’re going to take more than a day to go up to Dubai, we generally would prefer to go to another country entirely. Get a look at a country we haven’t seen. Maybe Turkey or India or Sri Lanka.

So, if we live in Abu Dhabi and work in Abu Dhabi, we need a reason to go to Dubai. One beyond “we want to see what the skyscrapers look at” or “they have nicer night clubs.” And we never found one. Well, and we rarely have had the same offdays for the past year.

Ultimately, it was soccer that got me to Dubai. Twice. Each time to see a match in the Presidenti’s Cup, which is the UAE answer to England’s FA Cup. First at the Al Nasr Club near the old center of the city, and now Al Wasl, another old club (by UAE standards) but south of the former city center.

And initial impressions?

Well, Dubai is certainly striking, especially when you drive in from the south (as I did). Imagine about 100 buildings of 30 stories or more lining the main freeway from Abu Dhabi, and that’s Dubai. You feel almost as if you are in a canyon. More than a little like New York, that is, aside from the skyscrapers being a bit more widely spaced.

Where the towers are thickest and tallest, including the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, is in the southern half of the city. The newer part. Where the Westerners are particularly thick on the ground. Quite a few members of The National staff live on the edge of Dubai and make the daily commute, which is about an hour in each direction.

They do it because rents are significantly cheaper in Dubai, since the real estate crash of 2009, and because they often have amenities for singles and young people that the low-slung villas of Abu Dhabi do not — swimming pools and exercise centers.

Back to Dubai. It seems a very difficult city to navigate. To look at its road map is to throw up your hands. I took a cab into the city tonight, and my Abu Dhabi driver had no idea where anything was. He stopped to ask “How do I get to the Wasl football stadium?” about 10 times, and not even the locals knew — and Wasl is one of the country’s four or five best known clubs.

I had a Dubai road map with me, but I had trouble conveying it to the driver because he could not read English (and could barely speak it) … and me pointing to the club on the map didn’t seem to register with him.

Finally, I made an executive decision, and told him to get off the freeway at the World Trade Centre exit and hang a right. The first time, we didn’t get the right right and ended up in the parking lot of a palace. We retraced our route and went around the roundabout below the freeway and took the exit just before the one we had taken previously, and that put us on another long stretch by Dubai Creek (actually a saltwater inlet), which got us close enough to Wasl to figure out how to get there.

So, in short, what impresses about Dubai when you’re driving in for the first time is the astonishing number of enormously tall buildings. Each one almost like its own little world. How you actually get to those buildings, and where you would park, and how you would get around to shop … not clear. It’s a city that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense as a working everyday entity. Unlike Abu Dhabi, which is far more horizontal and is laid out on a grid and you can walk to a market nearly anywhere in the city.

So, I’ve been to the circus and seen the elephant. It’s big and memorable, all right, but it’s not something I feel any need to become closely acquainted with.