Flight was 5 hours, didn’t get any sleep. The Ukrainian woman next to me spent most of it applying make up and doing her hair and kept nudging me. Frankly, it wasn’t worth the effort. One of the cabin crew looked remarkably like a younger Angelina Jolie, so that was nice. Arrived at 02:00, airport was busy but got through easily. Taxi took us to the hotel which was only 10 minutes away and he moaned for most of it because he’d been waiting an hour and wanted a longer trip – seems they are the same the world over. I put my violin away and paid him the $13.
We hadn’t booked the hotel for this day, weren’t sure what we would do, but he gave us a cheaper rate so we took it otherwise we would need to find something to do for 6 hours at 04:00 in the morning.
Slept like a log, woke up around 10:00 then out to a shopping mall to get something to eat. Walked out of the hotel into an oven – a big change from recent places. Luckily the mall was just around the corner, and it was huge, cool and busy. Went straight to the food court and both had an appalling excuse for a meal but since we both had blocked noses were fortunate we couldn’t really taste it. Song had a noodle thing and I had a toasted sandwich, and the less said about it the better.
Not satisfied with the size of this mall, we got the metro to the Dubai Mall, apparently the largest in the world.
The metro was packed, realised it was Saturday. Got off and walked to the mall. And walked, then walked a bit more with the aid of travellators, then did a bit more walking till we eventually got there. The main reason for going was to go up the Burj tower, but the weather was a bit hazy so wandered around the mall. This was no ordinary mall – it had a carousel, a star atrium, a dinosaur skeleton, an ice rink, 2 waterfalls and an aquarium – with sharks and stuff. In the mall.
Walked through the replica souk and stopped for a coffee and ice cream.
Carried on and discovered the high end area of the mall where there was jewellery and watches on display that cost more than the house.
Decided we’d had enough, on the way out I asked about going up the tower and was told it would cost about $130. If I booked for the next day it would be the bargain price of $80. I thought about it for about a second and said no thanks. I’d wanted to go up but not that much. I’d rather spend the money on a decent meal.
Song had a bath and I went back over to the mall to watch a movie, cost about the same as Australia.
Came out of the movie at 22:45 and the mall was still busy, including families with young kids, all the shops still open.
