What's in Dubai?
Well, nothing really! Or everything under the sun. It totally depends on your perspective. I have been to Dubai a few times, but mostly in passing. Meaning, in the past I have just spend a few hours if I had a layover that is too long to stay at the Dubai airport (which I use a lot both for business and family travels). However, this time around I am in a field trip based just north of Dubai in the Musandam Peninsula of Oman, so I thought I will spend just a couple of days at Dubai seeing a few things if time permits.
There you have it! Most pictures of central Dubai now dominates this pinnacle of monstrosity! Yeah, it is probably now the most photographed building of the world, and so why don't I add to the digital junk of the internet! Yeah, that was essentially my feeling getting into the trip. And Oh!, most of my pictures here will be vertical obviously to fit the tower of Burj Khalifa! I have cloudy and hazy Dubai right now as I write this post from my hotel room.
Here is the same view at night, slightly zoomed in! Yeah, I say the night view is better. You can see the sign of Dubai Mall, it is about 7-10 min walk to the mall from this hotel that I am staying.
Outside of my window looks like this. If you look at the scale of these 'ordinary' tall buildings, it becomes obvious how tall Burj Khalifa is! Also when you think about that they completed the building is essentially six years, you begin to appreciate the scale and speed of these projects. City of Houston haven't been able to repair the potholes in front of our outer gate for the last six years!
Alright, the next thing I must say is that the city of Dubai is much better at night. People typically leave well after sunset to hang out and downtown livens up at that time. It is very unlikely compared to most of the downtowns (except perhaps for Manhattan) which are mostly ghost towns after sunset. You can see the wall of the Dubai Mall on the left of this image, with quite a few pedestrians walking towards the Mall and the tower.
Here you go, the mandary picture of the inside of the Dubai mall. The place is massive, and takes hours to walk all around. Its spectacular and glitzy, and exceptionally good for people watching. Did I buy anything from there? No :)
Late at night, the tower is quite a site, and it is used as a live billboard (mostly for Emmar Properties) or whatever you like to use it for. There is artificial lake in front of the tower and there is light and sound show every half and hour at the fountains. This particular Sunday, I think there of tens of thousands of people visiting the mall!
It is really hard to find a space to lift up your phone camera to take a decent picture in this crowd. You can probably tell from the quality of the picture that I was struggling at this point. That said, Dubai Mall, is probably the best and largest mall I have seen anywhere in the world. As far as malls go for people watching (is there any other purpose of a mall?) Dubai Mall probably will top everything. So after walking around all day, all over the city (more on that on a later post), I was hesitating if I want to go to the top of Burj Khalifa at one of the observation decks or not. I mean, I was very skeptical of the crowds.
So Monday night when I went to bed exhausted, I had not plan on going there. But then the jet lag kicked in and I woke up at 4 am. I thought, I am rested and I am up already and I am not going to be able to sleep, so lets see if I have the sunrise tickets available. It was!
And it was beautiful and totally worth it! First it was almost empty. I got the 6 am slot with sunrise at 6:18. Although it was hazy, I did see the city slowly getting brighter.
This viewing area is not at the absolute top. This was floors 124-125, the max floor is I think 168. But hey, I enjoyed the place without the crowd and instagram influencers! I highly recommend the sunrise view for two reasons:
- No lines, no crowd
- You get a free coffee (I think you get it during the other times too, but morning joe is better)
- If you are jet lagged, you will have something prductive to do before breakfast
There you have it. Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa, pretty much the hottest ticket in town right now. There are many other things to do, and they are better. But that is another post!
