This is the world's only 7 star (unofficial) hotel, although they do not advertise themselves as such. The hotel star ratings only go up to five. The hotel is in the shape of a sail used on their old commercial shipping vessels, called dhows. It is built on a man made island setting 280 yards offshore. Their suites start at $1,000 per night and go as high as $28,000 per night.

We had lunch in one of their restaurants, but had to go through 4 levels of security to get to there. The levels of security is not related to terrorist threats, but to keep out the look-e-loos. There is a guard station on the land side, and they will not let you go any further if you don't have a confirmed restaurant reservation, you are a staying at the hotel or otherwise have some specific business at the hotel. Once we got past this guard there was yet another one stationed just before you cross the bridge connecting the island to the mainland. He simply waved us through, so maybe his purpose was to stop anyone who somehow incorrectly got past the first guard. Once inside the hotel we had free range of the lobby and could take whatever pictures we wanted.

But, when we tried to leave the lobby and go to the elevators we were stopped by another security person who asked us where we were going. We gave them the restaurant name and time of the reservation and they waved us on. Once at the elevators another security agent stopped us and confirmed with the restaurant that we did have reservations. Apparently this elevator you need a key to select a floor number as the agent got on the elevator with us, used the key and pressed the floor number. I guess this is to ensure no one gets off on any other floor. When the elevator door opened the hotel hostess met us and directed us to our table. While it took a lot to get there once seated the service, the view (overlooking the Persian Gulf) and the meal was great. The waiters were very attentive, constantly checking with us to see if we needed anything.

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