What a day! I woke up late, which concluded in a mad rush to pack, shower and wash my hair before FT with mum and Sue. I decided today to plant myself outside the apartment on the street corner and wait for a taxi, there was no way I was hailing one on the motorway with all my bags. My ingenious idea paid off and one arrived within minutes of me setting up camp.
I travelled straight to Carines work and dumped my bags, took directions for the metro and got lost, so decided to walk to the Burj Khalifa pretty easy you may think being the tallest building in the world. Incorrect! You may be able to see it from the other side of the city but getting there in the maze of motorways is a challenge, I ended up walking through a building site, car wash and Dubai mall.
So let's start with the mall, the third largest mall in the world and the largest in Dubai! It boasts a huge indoor waterfall atrium, full Olympic ice rink and an aquarium that would rival the largest in the UK. I cannot describe to you how enormous this place is, a true shoppers paradise. For those who know me however, this is not exactly my idea of fun, in fact it was more like a nightmare and it soon turned out to be one of the most disorientating experiences of my life. I thought the aquarium was a good place to start, took me nearly an hour to hunt it down through the maze of walks, atriums, levels etc... But when I first glimpsed it the walk was worth the trouble. it housed every fish you can think of plus sharks and two divers furiously scrubbing the fake coral. Shameless photo of me by said aquarium taken by another lone traveller. Not cool ;)
Now it was time to hunt down the entrance to the Burj Khalifa which was located somewhere in this maze, on route I stopped at one of the many food courts and got chatting to an English lady let loose on the mall while her husband attended some business errands. She looked as confused as I was even though she was a self confessed shopaholic, at that point I knew there was no hope for me. After this brief refuel on the most enormous salad known to man I found the entrance, paid my 400 Dirham and headed up the worlds tallest building. The entrance gave a great insight into the construction of the building, with time lapse photography and virtual images. Luckily I managed to enter the lift on my own to ascend the 124 floors to the viewing tower (there are another 40plus floors above) there was a video on the way up and it took about 66seconds, largely due the fact it also holds the world record for the fastest lift.
Upon stepping out the viewing tower you can feel the building swaying, which makes you feel slightly drunk. The weather was slightly hazy but the views were still amazing! Odd as it may sound you don't feel that high, it's just like being in an aircraft looking down on a model village of the city below. Didn't take me long and took a few more selfies for the photo album.
After my return to solid ground it was time for refuel no.2. I found a lovely Lebanese restaurant over looking the fountains opposite where I sat the night before (there is an aerial view of these from the top of verge Kahlifa below) I had a latte and a fruit salad while catching up on today's book which I am finally getting into 150pages in.
It was now time to get back to Carines work for the airport run. I had an hour, plenty of time.......or not! I passed the Ice Rink twice, walked through the same atrium 3 times and after over half an hour nearly admitted defeat and came to the conclusion I may spend the night wandering round this place. Luckily I saw a sign for taxi and marched with the blinkers on following the signs.
I arrived with 15mins to spare, so sat and wrote most of today's instalment. I am now sat at the airport waiting for a delayed flight that is overbooked, wish me luck for an upgrade!
This may be the last instalment for a few days/weeks! But I will be sure to keep writing down my adventures and will upload as soon as the jungle permits ;)
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