October 27 - Last Day in Dubai

We awoke to another warm and sunny day in Dubai.  I’m not sure they have any other kind.  Since our flight home doesn’t leave until 2:20 AM Tuesday, we had a whole day to fritter away.  Despite the fact that the hotel offered us use of the room until the afternoon, we decided to check out earlier, have them store our luggage and go to the Dubai Mall to kill some time.

This mall is absolutely incredible!  It’s the world’s largest in terms of total area with 13 million sq. ft.  It’s only 12th largest when counting leasable space of  only (!) 3.77 million sq. ft.  There are more than 1200 shops, 120 restaurants and cafes, a 22 screen movie theater, 250 room hotel, and 14,000 parking spaces.  Oh, did I mention there’s an ice skating rink too?

Entrance atrium. The shops greeting everyone included Tiffany, Cartier, Van Cleef& Arpels, and Harry Winston for those who wanted to pick up a few baubles.  I looked in the windows and didn't see any takers inside.

A water feature we happened upon somewhere in the mall. You don't get perspective here but the diving figures were larger than life.

 

The skating rink which was being used by a bunch of people

A dino in lights in the middle of the Old Souk section.  We're not sure how that connected to an old Arabian souk but it looked neat.

The mall has 3 levels with stores sort of grouped by type.  There’s an electronics wing, a shoe floor, jewelry section, watch lane, and even a recreation of an old souk.  Our entire mall at home would fit in the Food Court of this place.  To put it mildly, it was overwhelming.  We wandered around for a couple of hours referring to our map often in order to figure out where we were.  We managed to find the food court and had fish & chips which tasted pretty authentic to us.  Prices for everything seemed insanely high. 

After we’d walked several miles we decided we’d had enough and headed back to the hotel where we camped in the comfortable chairs in the lobby.  We still had free wi-fi so we managed to pass a few hours with Al checking e-mails and me updating my blog.  At 6 PM we headed to the airport.  Emirates has really nice lounges and we figured we might just as well while away time there.  When we arrived the place was deserted. An Emirates representative greeted us as the hotel car dropped us off and told us that the check-in counter didn’t open until 10 PM and we couldn’t go to the lounge until we’d checked in.  Another very nice lady said she would see what she could do ( I think she took pity on us with our mountain of luggage) and she checked us in just like that.  We went through all the passport and security in a flash, took the train to our terminal and are currently ensconced in the lounge.  They’ve served us drinks and dinner.  What more can we ask for, except perhaps that boarding time will  get here soon.  We have a fourteen and a half hour flight ahead of us and we’re hoping to be able to snooze a little.  Thankfully we have a car picking us up for the drive home.  Our own little bed is going to look awfully good and we can’t wait to see Emma.

A last view of the Burj Khalifa from the taxi on the way back to the hotel

So, bye, bye from Dubai!