20231217 AAAA Trip - Dubai, UAE Day #5 - Malling and Fountaining

2023 Alaska, Asia, Australia, Arabian Peninsula Trip 
Day 92/105 - Dubai, UAE Day #5 - Mall of the Emirates

Yeah, yeah, I know that yesterday, I said we would go back to the beach. We got up and talked about it and decided that since it was crowded yesterday, and today is still the weekend, it would likely be crowded again today. But tomorrow...well, that's Monday and it might be better. Based on that, we pivoted and decided to visit the Mall of the Emirates instead. Why visit another mall? Read on...

We made the walk to Dubai Mall and hopped on our City Sightseeing Dubai tour bus. It is the same route we drove yesterday, but there is so much to see, you see new things every time.

This wasn't new, but I did a better job capturing the Burj Al Arab because if you look to the right, you can see the Burj Khalifa in the background.

I also caught the new mosque on Palm Jumeirah from a different angle.

That's quite a modern minaret

As we passed Atlantis, Arlona liked seeing the fish details on the points.

The route the bus takes gets us close the Skydive Dubai - a large skydiving center. They were certainly operating today. We looked up and saw at least eight skydivers above us. They were all spread out but these four gathered for a photo.

After about two hours of touring on the bus, we arrived at the Mall of the Emirates. To be clear, it is only about 15 minutes from The Dubai Mall to the Mall of the Emirates, but the bus takes a more leisurely route with lots of hop-on / hop-off stops.

The reason we wanted to go there was to see one thing - Ski Dubai.

Located inside the Mall of the Emirates, Ski Dubai was the world's largest indoor ski hill until it was recently surpassed by one in China. This size thing is pretty entertaining. There seem to be three main players in the "mine is bigger than yours" game these days - Dubai, China, and Saudi Arabia. Each country is trying to outdo the others building bigger things.

Ski Dubai offers skiing, complete with a chairlift, zip lining, snowboarding, tobogganing, penguin encounters, and more, all inside at about 37°F. It is pretty amazing to see.

We grabbed lunch in the mall. When you travel outside the U.S., you tend to lose one thing we've all taken for granted - free refills on soft drinks. Today, we stumbled on a restaurant that offered free soft drink refills, The Butcher Shop & Grill. Woo! Score! Our sandwiches were great. They also offered terrific-looking steaks and more. As we were eating, we watched a family of four seated just across from us. The dad grabbed the ketchup and shook it up. Unfortunately, the cap wasn't attached and he sprayed ketchup all over the place, but mostly all over his brilliant white polo shirt. His lovely wife immediately got up and disappeared. A few moments later, she arrived with a bag. She bought him a new polo. He went and changed. When he came back, he smiled at me and said - look - it's white too! She bought him a new white polo. We laughed. He was a great sport about it all.

Feeling full, we decided to walk off lunch by touring the mall. It was a great place to people-watch. All kinds of people were in the mall and it was fascinating. People in shorts and tank tops, men in throbes with or without a keffiyeh, women in abayas with or without a hijab, and everything in between. Fascinating.

We wandered around, taking in the sights.

Many of the stores, both high-end and consumer-level, were the same as in the Dubai Mall. That's not surprising until you realize that there is enough business to support two Rolex boutiques 15 minutes apart, two Channel stores, two Dior stores, two Omega boutiques, and so on. Money flows here like water.

We caught the bus and made the short ride back to the Dubai Mall. Of course, there were special cars parked at the entrance.

A glistening silver Audi R8 and a white Mercedes G-Wagon

A heavily customized Lamborghini Urus

It was still early so we walked through the mall to the fountain area. There is another shopping area behind the mall so we decided to take a look. Since it was nice, we decided that if we could find a restaurant that served drinks and had outdoor seating, we would take advantage of the weather and enjoy a drink outside. We stumbled upon Maison De Curry and it hit on everything.

With a perfect location directly across the fountain from the Burj Khalifa and patio seating, it was a great place to enjoy a drink and watch the crowds walk by.

It was approaching 5 p.m. Hmm...if we order one more round of drinks, can we milk them for an hour so we can see the fountain show at 6? Let's try! We each got one more drink and enjoyed them until the fountain show started.

While I was snapping, Arlona was shooting a video.

Trying to leave after the show was rough. Think about a sea of humanity all moving in varying directions. We threw ourselves into the fray and walked over the bridge back to the Dubai Mall.

The cover over the bridge was lit up with thousands of lights

When we exited the mall, the Audi was gone, the Urus was moved back, and a baby blue Lamborghini Huracán was in the prime parking space.

Tomorrow is our last day in Dubai…sort of. On Tuesday, we’ll be packing up and taking an Uber to the cruise port where we will board the Oceania Riviera. We will remain in port all day Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Wednesday, we have a 4x4 Safari booked. We’ll decide what we will do on Thursday a little later.  As far as tomorrow goes, right now, we’re leaning toward our original plan for today – head back to the beach area. We will see how we feel in the morning.