New Years 2017 – Day 4

After we had breakfast, we took a taxi to the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.  It has 52 elevators including the fastest in the world.  It goes from floor 1 to 128 in less than a minute.

It is 3 times the height as the Eiffel Tower and twice as tall as the Empire State Building and they call it the world’s first vertical city.

To get on the elevator to go to the top of the Burj Khalifa you actually have to go inside the mall that surrounds it, the Dubai Mall, which is the world’s largest and most visited retail and entertainment destination.  They had 80 million visitors in 2014, that’s almost 220,000 people each and every day.

There is also a fountain at the bottom outside the mall that is the world’s largest fountain and later we went to see the fountain show and it was very impressive. 

The mall also houses an aquarium and underwater zoo which contains 85 species and 30,000 fish.  The highlight of the Aquarium is a 270 degree acrylic walkthrough tunnel for an incredible close encounter experience with the fish, including sharks and sting rays.   It also holds an Olympic size ice rink.  It is also the largest shopping mall in the world by gross leasable area and it has 1,200 shops and a huge food court.

We ate at the mall at one of the restaurants recommended by Andrew Zimmer’s food show and it wasn’t as good as we thought it would be – but very different.

After that we took a taxi back to the hotel and changed into clothes for our next experience, the Desert Safari.  We were picked up at the hotel at 2:30pm and drove to another hotel and picked up two couples who were father/son and their spouses from Germany.  They were very nice and we got to know them on the 2 hour drive out into the desert to the camp.  There we changed to Land Rovers for the trip into the desert.  We actually were able to get within a ½ mile of an estate of one of the Cousins to the King and it was pretty impressive.

The Land Rovers were vintage 1059’s Land Rovers and what fun we had as they drove us across the desert.  Our first stop was to watch a Falcon demonstration and it was very interesting to hear the trainer talk about her Falcons.  Then she let one loose and we watched it make several passes at a dead quail the trainer was trying to keep away from the Falcon.  It only took a couple of passes and the Falcon caught the lure.

Then we got back into our Land Rover for more desert driving until we came to a recreation of a Royal desert retreat.  There Barb got a Henna tattoo, which will last for a couple of weeks, we watched and ate the bread they made, drank Arabic coffee and had a wonderful meal.  The meal consisted of salads, breads, pork, lamb, chicken and camel meats.  They also had a couple of dancers perform for us. 

All-in-all we spent about 3 hours at the camp eating, eating some more, watching the performances and talking with the people from Germany, who were very nice.  Then it was time to drive back in town and we arrived at about 10:00pm so it was a long day.

Breakfast at the Marriott

At the Dubai Aquarium

                                                             At the Dubai Mall Fountains

Ready to leave in the morning

It looks like a toy city from the top of the tallest building in the world

Lunch

The tallest building in the world

Ready to go with our Land Rover

Out and about

Ed on his camel with his guide

Barb with the Falcon

Ed with the Falcon

At the camp

Barb on her camel

Getting a Henna

The view from the to