First off, people like to scare you about Dubai, one story makes it around the Internet and puts fear into everyone's minds. I'm sure these thing happen but when there are over 7.6 million visitors a year, being put in jail for having a poppy seed in your tooth isn't all that common. We haven't felt like we were outsiders, probably because we have mostly stayed in the touristy areas, but we haven't been on the receiving end of any dirty looks because of our clothing. Now, being the good seasoned travellers we are, we do respect the general rules set by the countries we visit. We are wearing "longer" shorts below the knee and we aren't slutting it about with our shoulders showing either. So maybe no one has a reason to give us dirty looks, and I'm fine with that.
Later as we walked through the mall, we did see some unruly travellers wearing tank tops and even one girl wearing a shear white top with a bright pink bikini top under it. I'm sure that most men wouldn't complain about a hot girl in Dubai, they just may have a hard time hiding it under their white robes. Maybe that is why they like their women draped in black showing no curves! It is those robes the men wear... you can't hide a thing! Okay, opinion piece over, now onto the day...
So our day started at Tim Horton's. Yes, we are in Dubai, the middle east, blah blah, but we are here to experience the city and there are more North American chains (American Eagle, Tim Horton's, Second Cup) than some small rural towns have in Canada. And who doesn't like a morning coffee with a bagel and cream cheese?
We hopped in a cab, because you need to take cabs in this city everywhere, and headed down The Palm Jumeira to Atlantis, the resort, hotel, waterpark at the end of the archipelago. The strange thing about this development is that is still in development. They ran into money issues and things have slowed. So much so that 2 of the monorail stations don't even function. One of them is over a huge construction hole with no way of even reaching the station that I could tell.
So we headed to Atlantis, this huge monstrosity at the top of the palm tree and first stop was the Lost Chambers Aquarium. I love a good aquarium. Even though the size wasn't as large and it was more for viewing pleasure than educational, I found it quite awesome. They had some great fish, many I haven't seen before and with my new 50mm lens (thanks Nana and mom/dad for the birthday present) I had a fun time snapping some great pictures.
One thing that I thought was pretty cool, the geek that I am, is that the cell phone towers on the Palm Jumeira are disguised as palm trees complete with the trunk bark and some fronds.
It is quite funny how the city has poured money into things like hidden palm towers, but yet they couldn't extend the monorail that we took from Atlantis to the mainland to the main Metro. So we had to hop into another cab in order to get us to the biggest mall in the word (the largest mall in total area), the Dubai Mall. This mall sits at the bottom of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the word. Do you see a trend here?
At first entry we thought, this mall is big, but it doesn't seem big. Then we kept on walking, and walking and taking escalators here and there. The mall is massive with over 1200 stores!
North American malls need to group their stores by category. At Dubai Mall, Baby Gucci was next to Baby Burberry. So convenient!
We ate at Cheesecake Factory (don't judge) and took in the sights and the stores. The mall has the largest acrylic panel aquarium and the largest candy store (Candylicious). So impressive! Inside the mall also has a souk (traditional shopping area but not so traditional as it has a Pandora), a Galleries Lafayette, Bloomingdale's (and a Bloomy's Home) and we noticed two Louis Vuitton's. Maybe one of them was a Baby LV. The picture below is of Fashion Avenue where most of the high end stores are. Although we did wonder why Marc by Marc Jacobs was here but not Marc Jacobs which was down the hallway just off of Fashion Avenue.
And yes, those things hanging in the middle are thousands of paper butterflies!
On the other corner of the mall there is also a great waterfall called creatively "The Waterfall". I like a good water feature and I wasn't disappointed. And this isn't even the big one!
The big one is the Dubai Fountain which is a Bellagio style fountain at the base of the Burj Khalifa. It "performs" from 6pm to 10pm every night, every 20 minutes. Definitely fun to see, but if you have seen the Bellagio Fountains, you probably won't be as wow'd as some fountain virgins may be.
That isn't Burj Khalifa behind the fountain, just some other piddly building, 12th highest in the city with 63 storeys, called The Address.
Now this is the Burj Khalifa. More on this Sunday when we go to the observation deck.
One last thing that we did today that is notable but definitely not the highlight of the day, was the quick trip to Old Dubai. We took the metro to Old Dubai and walked through the hot streets to find the Gold Souk. Not worth it. Stay where the Cheesecake Factory and Pull&Bear store is at Dubai Mall. Much more exciting.
What was fun was the metro. The metro is new new new. One line was finished in 2010 and one in 2011. The stations are all very consistent and nicely appointed. The metro is built above ground for the most part but underground through Old Dubai. The trains have very few seats but they do have a Gold Car where you get more comfortable seats for double the price. Worth it I suppose if you are travelling the entire line which would take you 69 minutes total on the red line. We opted for the regular tickets so at times we were packed like sardines in a stuffy train. Good for the experience, but we'll stick to taxis.
The trains have barely any handles! Quite lame especially when there weren't many seats. I'm not sure why train builders neglect to include enough places to hang onto.
So overall a great day. We saw lots of mall, lots of fish, and ate lots of North American food which included a trip to McDonald's for a completely awful Chicken Big Mac which had fishy mayonnaise (I couldn't even finish it).
Tomorrow we are heading back to Atlantis to spend the day frolicking in the water park Aquadventure and hopefully avoiding a sunburn. I'm looking forward to relaxing on a fake island shaped like a palm tree that is apparently sinking at 5mm at year although the government denies it while pondering the thought of purchasing gold in the Gold ATM.
