Throwback Travels: Dubai

Last easter I visited Dubai for the second time in my life. It was at the same trip as when I visited Bahrain which I also have a older post about so check that one out if you want a longer background story. But long story short my aunt and her husband has a apartment in Dubai Marina and we have been visiting them two times. And their apartment is just amazing!! The view over Dubai Marina from the 29th floor is quite fantastic.. For you who haven’t been in Dubai, it’s such amazing city. Dubai is such a unique metropolis. First of all the whole city is build from the ground in the middle of the dessert. There’s no real beaches and all islands are fake. Which is both like unbelievable and very cool in my opinion. I think it’s fascinating how we humans can create our own land, don’t you think? You can nearly find anything in Dubai, even though some of it might be fake it’s still such a fascinating cosmopolitan.

So what is there actually to do in Dubai? What are the must-see places?

Dubai Mall

You might just think Dubai mall is just another ordinary shopping center, but then you’re all wrong. The Mall is the world’s largest mall and is filled with over thousand shops, the world’s largest candy store and a big aquarium which also is the world’s largest acrylic panel. And Dubai mall is also located just beside the worlds highest building, Burj Khalifa. They like being the number 1 in everything ha?!Dubai Mall is for me a must-see in Dubai and it’s also a great place to escape the heat. I would say that the thing I like the most about Dubai mall is their Fountain with super long water jets in front of Burj Khalifa, they do fountain shows with music in the evening which is really entertaining.

I’m giving you 5 reasons why Dubai Mall isn’t even near being a ordinary shopping center!!

1. It has the area of 50 football pitches (!!)
2. They have a theme park inside the mall called Sega Republic, I actually did not know they had a them park until recently and I can’t understand how I’ve missed it..?
3. There’s a Olympic sized ice skating rink located on the ground floor but that extends to the second floor.
4. They’ve got a waterfall inside the mall! And not a normal waterfall either, it’s a illusion waterfall with statues that’s diving down the waterfall and if you stare at one of them the other ones disappear.
5. The mall actually has a luxury hotel with 250 rooms, 120 restaurants and a parking facility that give room for 14,000 cars, that’s a lot of cars.

Burj Khalifa

The mixed-use skyscraper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Also known as the world’s highest building at its 828 meters and 160 floors, is even more impressive in reality than on pictures. It’s three times as tall as the Eiffel Tower and nearly twice as tall as the Empire State Building. And it’s elevator is the fastest one in the world, it travels with a speed of 10 meter per second (!!)

I haven’t actually been up in the building yet, but I hope I will next time. Around Burj Khalifa you have this huge “pool canal” and different types of restaurants where you can just relax, eat your dinner, watch the fountain show and enjoy the marvelous view of the world’s highest building. It’s such a odd feeling being there. You can’t really imagine how tall this building really is and despite if you’re standing in front of it or not it’s still very hard to understand. But if you look at the second picture below you can almost see every floor, right? Then think of how high a normal apartment house is where you live. Crazy right!? Burj Khalifa would be more than 10 times taller than the average apartment houses in my city.

Visit Old Dubai by sea

If you have the time and possibility I absolutely recommend spending a day at sea. My aunt and her husband have their own yacht, but you can always hire one for a few days depending on how long you’re staying. I can’t say that we really visited Old Dubai, more like we got a gaze of the city when we drove through Dubai Water Canal. Old Dubai isn’t really the most touristic place which makes it a bit more real than the city where wherever you go you’ll find huge skyscrapers. If you want to see more culture, I guess this is one of the best places to visit.

The canal is filled with lots of old and beautiful boats like the ones you can see on the picture below. And wherever you turn your head there’s always so much to see, it nearly makes you dizzy lol. I loved this day, it was such a fun and still relaxing day, spending time on the boat.

Now, I’ve probably written way too much so if you came this far.. wow your a great reader! In fact I asked you guys on twitter if you’d like a extremely long blogpost or if I should chop it down to two parts, and the most of you thought two blogposts sounded better, which I have done and which means I have even more must-see places to share with you!

Stay tuned and happy travels!

XO, TUVA

all pictures are my own.