2023 Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabian Peninsula Trip
Day 88/105 - Dubai, UAE Day #1 - Celebrating Arlona's birthday
We were up at 5 a.m. this morning - thank you, time change. We did get a decent night's sleep, so we weren't feeling wiped out. One more day and we should be fully acclimated to this new time zone.
Breakfast opened at 6:30 a.m. and we were there. The hotel offers a nice buffet with made-to-order eggs and omelets so breakfast will be easy during our stay. What isn't easy? The elevators in this hotel. Let me explain.
There is no elevator button. There is an elevator display pad. Five elevators are labeled A, B, C, D, and E. You scroll to your desired floor on the pad and press it. It responds with an elevator letter. You stand and wait for that one elevator until it gets there. You cannot get on any other elevator because there are no floor buttons inside the elevator. When your elevator arrives, it already knows what floor you want to go to and if you get in another, it won't stop on your floor. It all sounds efficient, but it's not. Our room is on 14. We wanted to go to the ground floor. We hit "G" on the pad and it said to use elevator C. The problem was that elevator C was on 20 and going up. We had to wait for it to go all the way to 47 before it came back down to 14. Two other elevators came and left but they weren't going to G. In the grand scheme of things, it is a small complaint, but standing for nearly five minutes waiting for an elevator when you're already tired and cranky doesn't play well.
Back to today. After breakfast, I looked out our window at the building across the street. Our building is 47 stories. This is Chelsea Tower and it is 48 floors plus the decorative top.
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| I saw something interesting about 3/4 of the way up - see it? |
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| How about now, between the bottom two longer white stripes? |
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| There were four workers out there dangling from ropes washing the windows - yikes! |
Washing the windows has to be a full-time job here as it is really dusty. Arlona said she could feel the dust in her mouth. You can see the haze/dust hanging in the air every day.
We made the 25-minute walk to the Dubai Mall.
Why go all the way to Dubai just to go to a mall? First, it isn't just a mall, it is the largest mall in the world, depending on how you count it. It doesn't have the most retail square footage, but it is the largest in overall square footage. Why? Because the Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo in smack dab in the middle of the mall. Seriously, there is a huge aquarium right in the mall. In addition, the lower ground level connects the Dubai Mall to the Burj Khalifa. This meant the Dubai Mall would be our base of operations for the day.
As malls go, this one is pretty fantastic. Every high-end retailer you can think of is here, plus a bunch of more mid-level vendors. There are over 1,200 shops here, plus a whole bunch of restaurants. You never know what you'll see in the mall. $2,000,000 jewel-encrusted guitar? Yup.
Animal sculptures around the mall? Sure.
We hit the aquarium just after its 10:00 a.m. opening time and that was perfect. Crowds were minimal and we were able to take everything in. The aquarium is located on the ground floor. After touring, you go up two floors to floor #2 where the Underwater Zoo is.
The first thing you see when you approach the aquarium is a massive, and I mean massive window plus a couple smaller windows that make up a viewing area into the main tank.
The cool thing is that it is visible in the mall - you don't need a ticket. What the ticket gets you is more views into the tank, a tunnel through the tank, additional tanks and areas, plus entry into the zoo.
Here's a look at some of the aquarium and zoo features.
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| These needle-nosed sharks look so cool! |
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| I can't remember what I was trying to photograph, but this guy photobombed it! |
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| The entry into the underwater tunnel |
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| These rhinobatos also were super-cool |
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| View 360-degree photo |
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| View 360-degree photo |
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| Let's play Find the Frogs! There are two. |
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| Here is one next to the stick in the middle |
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| Here is the other, between the rocks |
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| This is from another frog tank |
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| We had never seen these before |
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| It is a type of seahorse but looks more like a flying dragon |
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| They had two crocs |
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| One was massive, the other was smaller |
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| Bunches of bats - they were flying around in their enclosure |
It took us a couple of hours to get through everything in both areas. We really enjoyed it. It is set up well and designed to be able to get a lot of people through while still providing a good experience. Keep in mind that this is all inside the Dubai Mall. Amazing. At 12 million sq ft, the mall's total area is equivalent in size to 200 soccer pitches. With a total internal floor area of 5.9 million sq ft, The Dubai Mall has 3.77 million sq ft of gross leasable space and over 1,200 retail stores, two anchor department stores, and more than 200 food and beverage outlets. It even contains an Olympic-sized skating rink.
We finished up a little after noon and were hungry. We headed to the main food court. We perused the choices and Arlona settled on German Donner Kebab.
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| I had the Donner Box with beek kebab meat and fries underneath |
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| Arlona got the chicken kebab sandwich and fried |
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| Everything was tasty |
We had time before our scheduled 2:30 p.m. ascent at the Burj Khalifa so we wandered around the mall. Just about anything you can think of is here from high fashion with all the designer stores to kids designer fashion, to home goods, to electronics, and more.
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| The mall was decorated for Christmas with several trees and displays |
Eventually, it was our time to ascent the Burj Khalifa so we made our way over and queued for the lifts (that's "lined up for the elevators").
At over 828 meters (2,716.5 feet) and more than 160 stories, Burj Khalifa holds the following records:
Tallest building in the world
Tallest free-standing structure in the world
Highest number of stories in the world
Highest occupied floor in the world
Highest outdoor observation deck in the world
Elevator with the longest travel distance in the world
Tallest service elevator in the world
There are multiple observation decks. We chose the 124 & 125 story level. The decks on 148, 152, 153, and 154 cost more money and didn't provide a substantially better view. Deck 125 is 456 meters up and that worked for us. The speeded 10 m/s elevators whisked us up 1,496 feet in no time.
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| You can see the dust in the air |
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| Looking mostly north, toward our hotel |
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| There is our hotel, all measly 47 stories of it |
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| A mosque and something that resembled the Arc de Triomphe |
The built-in processing in my cellphone seems to clean up some of the haze.
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| My angel |
A trip up the Burj Khalifa is definitely worth it. It is an impressive engineering feat that took only six years to complete from the first shovel hitting the dirt to opening. I have no idea how long the preliminary engineering took, but it is still a marvel.
After riding back down, we walked outside to the fountain area for some outdoor photos of the Burj Khalifa and the surrounding area. We didn’t stay for the fountain show and plan to come back another night.
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| It towers over everything else |
Arlona decided that for her birthday dinner, she wanted…cheesecake. Yes, she actually said that. Lucky for me, there is a Cheesecake Factory right in the mall so that’s where we went. Given that one slice of their cheesecake has 1400 – 1500 calories, that sounded like a good, healthy choice!
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| Arlona had the Godiva chocolate cheesecake and I had the Oreo cheesecake |
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| They sang Happy Birthday to Arlona |
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| We did some damage |
We had been on the go all day and were starting to get tired, having not yet fully adjusted to this seven-hour time shift. We waddled back to the hotel.
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| Arlona, admiring the view |
On the way back, we stopped at a store and bought a small box of detergent. Our room has a washing machine so we will take advantage and get some laundry done in the evening so we won’t be scrambling on the ship. Unfortunately, the washer is a combo washer and dryer and it seems to be slower than the elevators in this building. It has been washing for the past two hours. It’s 10 p.m. and we’re both exhausted so as soon as it finishes, we may be hanging up stuff to dry or pausing it and resuming in the morning. Live & learn. Arlona says she had a good birthday and that’s what was important today.
Tomorrow – Museum of the Future!
Happy belated Birthday Arlona, What a marvelous place to celebrate.
ReplyDeleteWOW but what caused you two to go to Dubai.
ReplyDeleteWe're taking a cruise on Tuesday around the Persian Gulf.
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