Day 6, Dubai: The Desolation of Dubai Mall.

(Posted by Andrew about the events of Dec 17; Dubai, UAE)

Today was our whistle-stop tour of Dubai, having only one day to see the the entire city.

We started at the Atlantis Hotel at the top of the Palm Jumeirah. There wasn't all that much to see here, though the aquarium was impressive. What we especially enjoyed was that the aquarium didn't bother putting up placards explaining what the fish were and where they were from: just look at the fish and go "oooooh" and "that's so weird". You know you're just going to forget everything twenty minutes later, so why bother pretending you're learning. Also, they had all these cool chairs you could sit in and pretend you're some bad-ass from the Riddick movies:

Next stop was the Marina, which was pleasant but didn't have much to do outside of the restaurants. The real attraction was the architecture: as with all the skyscrapers in Dubai, you get to see what happens when you give architects a virtually unlimited budget and a mandate to show off; every building is unique and impressive.

In the afternoon we headed to Dubai Mall to go up to the observation deck of the Burj Khalifa. To be honest, once you've been to the top of a few tall buildings it begins to dull your senses and you can't tell that you are whatever number of floors higher than you've ever been. The real attraction was the elevator: it is the fastest public elevator in the world but has no windows and accelerates so gently that you can barely feel it; if not for the floor numbers increasing I wouldn't have thought we were even moving.

We then had several hours to kill to wait until the evening fountain shows. We're not big fans of malls so we decided to kill the time seeing the latest "The Hobbit" movie. It was forgettable, and made no better by the fact that it had both Arabic and French subtitles:

(That shot is a bit out of focus but that's the best picture I was brave enough to take because the ushers come in to scan the audience every ten minutes. Our theory is that they're making sure that nobody is using the privacy of the dark theatre for a little hanky-panky. And yes, I did just use the term "hanky-panky"; apparently I've suddenly turned 80.)

Other than that the mall was just like any other: large, crowded, and full of most of the same stores and brands we could get back home. The sight of women in full burkas shopping at Victoria's Secret did seem a bit counter-intuitive, though. Also strange was that we spotted our fifth and sixth Tim Horton's stores so far; Dubai has the highest concentration of Timmy's that we've ever seen outside of Canada; in fact I'm not sure I've ever seen one outside of the Great White North. (For non-Canadian readers: Tim Horton's is a coffee shop where Canadians line up for an inordinate amount of time for coffee.)

After a long day we were desperate for a sit and a drink, and fatigue turned into annoyance when we confirmed that there was not a drop of booze in the mall. The food and drink at our resort is quite expensive, so we were happy to fill up on food at the mall but then were desperate to get back to the "booze oasis". We made a minor misstep here and followed the advice of our tour guide who said to avoid the lines at the taxi stand by going to an alternate taxi location on the other end of the mall. The result was an hour long trek in circles that would Sam and Frodo proud. At one point we found ourselves going the wrong way on a moving sidewalk that was so long I'm pretty sure we could see the curvature of the Earth. When we finally gave up and went to the official taxi stand and did in fact encounter a long line... of empty taxis desperate for a passenger.

Tomorrow we leave Dubai for our next country.