We were a little slow getting started this morning. Actually, we were at breakfast by 8:30am or so (5:40am in Venice), but it was such a beautiful morning that we lingered and ate…and lingered and ate, all under a canopy by the pool with a view of the Burj Khalifa. It felt hot today, because it was…90F with about 95% humidity. The air was hazy, or cloudy, or something, and that was a little disappointing, given our evening plans.
What a way to start a day!
Their breakfast buffet was a pescatarian’s delight
Relaxing by the pool
By 11am-ish, we were making the walk to the front of the Dubai Mall to board our City Sightseeing HOHO bus. Now, the Dubai Mall is five minutes from our hotel…from the front door of the front lobby to perhaps the closest reaches of the mall. But, as I’ve said, it’s physically the second largest mall in the world, so we quickly learned to plan on 30 minutes of focused walking just to get to the HOHO bus. Our intention for the afternoon was to go to the beach just to say we waded in the Persian Gulf, then take photos of the Burj Al Arab, and then go to the Mall of the Emirates to see Ski Dubai, which was the world’s largest indoor ski resort until China topped it last year…but, no worries, Dubai has a huge expansion in the works (of course it does).
We did the beach stop, and next went to another beach with views of the Burj Al Arab. This was a huge thrill for me; I still remember when the hotel opened, seeing it on the cover of Condé Nast and thinking, “I’ve gotta see that some day!” It is located on its own private island, and, unless one is staying there, or paying a ridiculous amount for afternoon tea or a meal, one iskindly requested to not sully their property. Therefore, my photos of it are all from an adjoining beach or (hopefully tomorrow) from a boat.
El Jumeirah Beach
The Burj Al Arab Hotel
What we hadn’t counted on is that traffic in Dubai, and distances are both much greater than we had anticipated. Getting from one place to another, which we thought would be just a 15-20 minute trip, turned out to be 45-60 minutes. We had tickets for At The Top of the Burj Khalifa at 4:30pm, booked a month ago to optimize both daytime, sunset and nighttime viewing. We had to put off Ski Dubai to another day and head back to the Dubai Mall stop.
Luckily, we had scoped this out yesterday afternoon, and knew exactly where to go for our At The Top experience. We actually arrived about 20 minutes early, and when I asked the representative what time we could up, he said, “What time do you want to go?”, and, naturally, we took advantage of that lull in the lines before the sunset crowd hit and very nearly walked directly to the elevator. And I was very, very happy we hadn’t paid an extra $50-ish each to purchase ‘Skip the line’ tickets, because that would have been wasted money.
On our walk to the elevator, we read some displays that told the history of the Burj Khalifa, which, at 160 stories high, was the tallest building in the world when it was opened in 2010 and remains so today. Though there is an outdoor observation deck on the 148th floor, it is considerably more expensive to go there compared to the outdoor observation deck on Floor 124 and indoor viewing from Floor 125, which are sold together. We had purchased tickets for those, and paid a premium for a sunset/nighttime experience. So our elevator ride from Floor 1 to 124 took just over a minute on the fastest elevator in the world. Pretty cool.
An ear popping elevator ride
We first went out on the outdoor platform and took photos of the Dubai Fountain and our hotel, which required looking straight down. Luckily, I am not one bit afraid of heights. We made our way around the circular platform and then went inside to climb the circular stairs up to Floor 125. We stayed there for sunset, such as it was (our only disappointment was that it was so cloudy, but we got a few good pics), and then watched as darkness fell and the city lights came on. That was so beautiful.
The Downtown Dubai area
The Dubai Mall is on the left, the Souk Al Bahar in the middle and The Palace Downtown on the right, surrounding the Burj Khalifa Lake and the Dubai Fountain
The expressways are crazy.
The outdoor viewing platform.
A simulation of standing 125 floors high and looking down. Even though it’s just like standing on a photo, some people tried but couldn’t do it. Fear of heights is real!
Our only hint of the sunset
Downtown Dubai area after dark
The 6pm fountain show from 124 floors above
The Dubai Mall. It’s massive.
We stopped back to the outdoor platform before we went back down, and were shocked when the revolving door let us out to find gale force winds and rain. We had realized, when we were inside, that clouds were going by right outside the glass, but hadn’t felt the wind, which was notable, since the top sways 5 feet in a heavy wind. But being outside in that wind was kind of spooky. It was actually pulling people’s shirts out of their waistbands and then blowing them up over their heads, so women were holding on to everything.
Once we were back down we were starved. We hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was nearly 6:30pm, so we stopped in The Café at the bottom of the Burj Khalifa, and part of the Dubai Mall, and ate dinner at covered outdoor tables overlooking the Dubai Fountain. And just as we sat down, Andrea Boccelli singing Time to say Goodbye began playing and the 6:30pm fountain show was set to that. Chills! We had certainly just heard that song a lot while we were in Italy.
Time to Say Goodbye
On our walk back to The Palace Downtown, it started to torrentially rain and we were shocked. This is the desert! We were soaked to the skin by the time we got to our hotel, but changed into robes and still sat outside until 11pm watching the light and fountain shows. It was so fun to see them while being so comfortable when we knew that crowds of people were standing outside the mall in the rain.
Cozy on our lanai but still seeing the Dubai Fountain
We set an alarm for 5am (really) and fell into bed. Just one more full day in Dubai. Weep.