United Arab Emirates - Dubai Part III

Our last day in Dubai arrived. We only spent a week here, but we were ready to go home. All of our days weren't terrible, but the extreme culture shock definitely left us longing for home. What's strange is that we could have found any type of food or store that we had back home (literally everything from IHOP to The Gap). We missed home because of the sheer environment. 

We are normally very early risers on vacation. I would sooner go to bed at 8PM and get up at 5AM and have a full day ahead of me than sleep in late. I've never been one for nightlife. But on our last day, we didn't have too much planned. So, instead of getting up at some ungodly hour, we slept in until about 9. We took our time getting ready in the morning and enjoyed our last blazing hot shower inside the Hyatt Regency room 624. Our flight home that evening wasn't until midnight, so we paid for an extra day in our room so we could leave our luggage secure and take our time packing. Also, we thought that we might want to come back and shower before heading for the airport. 

During the week, we saw most of the notable sites in Dubai save for one key place, the Burj Khalifa (the tallest building in the world). We pre-bought tickets online for the observation tower for our last day at 3pm. Since we had no other real plans for the day other than exploring the area immediately around the Burj Khalifa, we gave ourselves a lazy morning. 

We could have taken the metro from our hotel to the Dubai Mall (right next to the Burj Khalifa) but our hotel offered a free shuttle, so we took advantage of that at 11AM. Ah yes! This is the Dubai that we were expecting when we got here. Much more city-like and more touristy. Too bad we didn’t see this side of Dubai until now. We thoroughly enjoyed our last day here, and I liked ending the trip on a high note. 

The Dubai mall is HUGE! And trust me when I tell you that I know what a big mall looks like. I grew up near the King of Prussia mall outside Philadelphia which is the second largest mall in the United States. To give you a global perspective, King of Prussia is the 27th largest mall in the world. The Dubai Mall is the 17th largest in the world. You can easily spend all day here. 

Fountains inside the Dubai Mall, UAE

Inside one of the wings of the mall, they have more touristy "souks" that are supposed to mirror the real thing but are within the confines of the mall. Across the way from the mall, they have more craft shops than they do in the mall itself which I enjoyed browsing through as well.

"Souks" inside the Dubai Mall

We ate lunch at a restaurant called "The Noodle Factory" and then caught the last 30 seconds of the Dubai fountain show. The complex around the Burj Khalifa is enormous. You have the mall on one side, the Burj Khalifa in the middle "towering" over the fountains below and then across the other side of the man made pond with the fountains are the other boutique-type shops.

Boutique shops across the "pond" from the Dubai Mall

After walking, shopping and indulging in some ridiculously expensive Italian gelato, we hurried to keep our 3:00 time to go up Burj Khalifa. Back in 2013 when we visited, they only had one observation deck opened to the public. Unfortunately, it only went about halfway up, but that’s still higher than the top of the Eiffel Tower. Luckily the view wasn’t too bad. (If you visit now, they've recently opened another observation deck that goes up much higher.) We had some pretty hazy days where the view would have been terrible, but our last day was the clearest day by far. We got some great views from the tower. What stunned us the most was the vast amount of nothingness beyond the city itself. We got incredible views of the city of Dubai, but beyond the city lay miles and miles of endless desert.

My picture of the Burj Khalifa - a little more than half of tower

After the tower, we shopped some more. I waited until the very last day to do any souvenir shopping, so after our elevator ride up and down the tower, I got to work buying up things to remember our week here. I got stuffed and pressed dates for my bosses and a silk scarf for a friend. For myself I wanted to get a Bedouin shield that I saw in a few different shops. This small, round shield came bejeweled and framed. We took a break from shopping to eat dinner at a sit-down Iranian restaurant in the food court. Then I finally made a decision on which shield I wanted. I ran back across the bridge to the Al Jaber silver shop negotiated a price I was happy about, and then we walked 15 mins across the walkway from the mall to the metro one last time to Palm Deira. One last time across the sand pit to the hotel. 

We packed up everything; my husband got a quick shower, and around 9:15PM we checked out and hopped in a taxi to the airport. At the airport, we had to go through 3 security check points. The first was even before we checked in to get our boarding passes. The second was when we were walking to our gate (the normal spot) and then again as we boarded the plane. It seemed strange and overly cautious to us but realizing we were in a small country smack in the middle east, we understood why they took extra precautions. We never had to remove our liquids, but at the check point before we boarded, security officers opened each of our bags and examined them by hand. Before too long we boarded the 14 hour flight from DBX to IAD. They fed us diner and breakfast for our 6AM arrival. To our delight we were 30 mins early. We made it through customs and immigration in no time and were home just after 7AM. (I must say that these days of quick customs arrivals have gone by the wayside. Since our trip to the UAE, it has taken us well over an hour to get through international customs once we arrived back home.) We suffered from pretty serious jet lag after this trip given that the time difference was exactly opposite of what we have on the East Coast. We struggled a lot the first day, seemed to do better the second day, but then for the next couple of mornings we found ourselves exhausted by 6-7pm and waking up around 3AM. Took us a good week to get out of that cycle. 

Thanks for reading about by exotic, Arabian adventures. If this type of trip went too far outside your comfort zone, don't give up. My next series will take us back to the more familiar tourist grounds of Western Europe. In a little over two weeks later this same year, I traveled to Denmark, Germany, and Austria. Look for those posts filled with fantastic cities, gorgeous castles, romantic countryside, and a few little surprises thrown in for good measure. Until next time, happy traveling! 

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler