So excited for our flight that we had to try out the eye masks.
And having an empty seat between Daniel and me was super clutch. Etihad also had a mini lights show before takeoff? (not really, the lights changed color but that was it) And a view of the clouds over Iran.
Our hotel was pretty sweeeeet.
Our walk around town culminated in this picture of Thien and I with the Chelsea gear and then Thien and Daniel getting ice cream from Baskin Robins (after we just got the same at McDonalds. We're such Americans). And looking into the bar from our hotel.
So we woke up pretty early at 6:15, which was not as difficult as it sounds thanks to the jet lag. After getting ready, we hopped in a taxi and headed to the main bus station so we could catch one of the buses that left every ten minutes for Dubai.
We thoroughly enjoyed being able to see everything in the daylight now, and all the buildings we passed were so gorgeous and unique. If I were an architect, I would definitely want to be in the UAE--so much creative license!
And then we were in Dubai! And after a quick bathroom stop, we began to explore. First stop was the Dubai Marina. So again we hopped in a taxi (there's a theme here and taxis are REALLY cheap) and headed to the opposite end of Dubai. We got out at the Dubai Marina Mall (one of the top 3 malls in Dubai) and walked through it to get to the other side where the marina is located. The water was beautiful as was the 7km long promenade that's lined with over 200 restaurants and some little stalls for buying trinkets. We decided to walk along the promenade and soak it all in.
Dubaiiiii! Daniel and I were just a bit excited while Thien soaked it all in. This is Laughing Cow cheese in Arabic packaging. This is what we had for breakfast to spread on our french bread. We may have gotten crumbs all over the bus, whoops.
Grabbing some coffee at the Dubai Marina mall before we walked among the skyscrapers around the marina.
Turnt up in Dubai! These buildings are seriously only the beginning of the ridiculous architecture. The Marina was beautiful.
We walked all the way down to the Palm Island at Jumeirah, which is a ridiculously beautiful man-made island that's shaped like a palm (not kidding). It's 2.5 miles long and the end culminates in some big resorts, the biggest being an Atlantis hotel complete with a water park. If only we had more time in Dubai, we would have gone to this waterpark. It looked amazing! As did all the homes that were on the island which had the ocean in their backyards. Literally. Who is down for selling their souls and going in on buying one of those? Because Daniel and I dreamed about doing that as we took the monorail out to Atlantis. So much lavishness in this city.
Atlantis! We should have stayed here for one night... selfies while we take the monorail. We were inspired to do this because of all the tour groups around us doing it with their iPads.
The Persian Gulf! It was a beautiful day by the beautiful sea.
After exploring a bit outside of Atlantis, we decided to see what we could do inside the building. Turns out there was some shopping and an aquarium!
We definitely walked into a piece of the aquarium without paying. I'm telling you, confidence and acting like you know what you're doing will get you really far! Daniel and I with the Dubai skyline (or at least a part of it) behind us.
The view from Atlantis at the tip of the man-made Palm Island back towards Dubai.
We then caught a cab to the Mudinat Jumeirah which was a souk (market) that had lots of different things on sale. It also has a good view of the 7 star hotel which we looked into going to but decided that at a 500 AED minimum (equivalent to $131) for afternoon tea that it just wasn't worth it. So we took pictures of it instead!
The market at Mudinat! Look at all those chocolates.
But the real reason we wanted to go was to get a picture of this 7-star hotel. It's the tallest hotel on the planet and probably one of the most expensive.
After that we were starving so we had a taxi driver drop us off at a restaurant called The Turkish Village. It was pretty darn good, and I'm glad for it since it was our only real meal for the day.
Lunch was really delicious. We had this salad which I don't remember what it was called but it included tomatoes, cilantro, walnuts, balsamic, etc. Then this wonderful mint lemonade concoction. And finally, my chicken shawarma. YUM.
We walked around the mall, had a coffee, walked outside by the Dubai Fountain (think similar to the fountains at the Bellagio). We had some time to burn before heading to the old souk markets, so we sat there for a while and people watched. You see all kinds of people doing this in Dubai, from the very traditional to the super short shorts we were told didn't fly. That was clearly a lie. People in Dubai (and Abu Dhabi) don't really care what you wear. You might get more stares if you aren't dressed conservatively but that's about it.
Sweet fountain inside the mall. I guess these guys are all very brave, diving down the waterfall like that. And Texas Roadhouse because you could find every big American chain you can imagine in this mall. Including all the stores and designers. The Burj Khalifa is so tall that you can't even get the whole thing in the picture.
But we certainly tried! And looking across the pool/outdoor fountains to the surrounding buildings. The water is so pretty!
Through the palms looking up at the Burj Khalifa. This was when we had to do a round trip to find the entrance. Cool. My poor feet. But at least the mall had an ice rink! That was being used for a crossfit competition... And then we have a model of Dubai.
Eventually it reached 5pm so we headed on over to the souks,. First we visited the textiles and souvenirs souk. It was a vastly entertaining experience as people tried to get us to come visit their stall. Daniel got called Jack Sparrow a lot, Thien received Jackie Chan and konitchiwa, and I got Nicole Kidman, Shakira, Maria from Pirates, and Jessie J. So many laughs. Especially when people kept trying to place their wares on us, determined that if we tried the pashmina we would certainly buy it! Thien kept running away from them, but they all still wanted our attention. Eventually we were able to find some shops that had what we were looking for and then we were on to the next souk!
We took a very quaint water taxi to get across Dubai Creek to the gold souk. It cost all of 1 AED (a little over 25 cents USD). An entertaining ride and well worth the money. The boat was essentially a wide wooden canoe with a raised wooden platform in the middle for people to sit on. We made it to the gold souk where none of us bought anything but we enjoyed looking around. Thien did end up buying some essential oils though. He is all about those oils.
Water taxis! Can't you see how safe they look? But we survived. And got a great view out of it! All for 30 cents.
Looking into the souks, there were tons of people and wares being sold.
Eventually we had enough of the souks and it was time for our reservation at the top of the Burj Khalifa, which is, as I mentioned earlier, the tallest building in the world. Standing at 820+ meters, it is HUGE. The Atmosphere lounge where we were was "only" 123 floors up, but the building goes up to 160-something. And the units at the top are residences... imagine being the owner of that! It was a great view and a really awesome experience, as it should be for the amount of money we had to pay to get up there. How it worked was there was a minimum per person you had to spend to get into the lounge, so we had a couple drinks and some food to make sure we did that. Which was easy enough, since it was only like 3 things we needed to buy.
We took lots of pictures before leaving and then we tried to see the Dubai Fountain lights show. We ended up catching only the tail end of it which surprised us since we heard it was about 15 minutes long. Again, lies. It maybe lasted 5 minutes. Sad day for us. We didn't want to stick around 30 minutes for the next show because we wanted to make sure we caught the bus back to Abu Dhabi, which ended up being a good thing.
The Burj at night! And up to the 123 floors we go. My ears only popped a couple of times. And my first order was a cocktail and some wagyu meatballs. They got me 2/3 of the way to my minimum spend of 300 AED (~$85 US), but the meatballs were pretty subpar. A Tavola in Cincinnati has better wagyu meatballs and they are 1/3 of the price.
My last purchase, was a caipirinha! Yummy! And can you tell from this photo how high up we were? It's really ridiculous how all those skyscrapers look small from up that high. And Thien of course found a friend from study abroad that he knew lived in Dubai but didn't know that he worked at the Burj Khalifa. Small world, I tell you.
Group photos! Spencer, Dana, Daniel, Thien, and me. Then our group of three on the stairs.
Turns out the bus back from Dubai to Abu Dhabi is quite busy. We had to wait in a long line and didn't make the first bus. Or the second... at least initially. They had the line separated into men and then ladies and families. Since Thien and Daniel had me with them and we couldn't get separated, into the family line we went. Which didn't help our anxiety since only about 1/3 of the bus is for women and families. But thankfully we made it! And just in time, because we were all exhausted! But we made it back safely to our hotel and crashed.
And thankfully my new shoes made the other 5 miles we walked much more comfortable.
