We successfully navigated the nine hour, overnight flight from Denpasar while recovering from Bali belly (me), and arrived safe and sound in Dubai shortly before 6 a.m. local time. I don’t usually sleep well in planes, but that was the plus side of having been sick all day- I conked out! Also on the plus side of things, for both of us the Bali Belly was a relatively short (24 hour) experience. UAE made customs and immigration easy peasey, so we were in the cab and checking in to our hotel by about 8:00 a.m.

With huge thanks to the lovely front desk clerk, they let us check in early so we got to drop off our things, shower, and change clothes before we headed back out to our first ticketed event of the day: the Dubai Miracle Garden!

Miracle Garden

This was another bucket list destination for me that I have wanted to see since reading about and seeing pictures of their Grand Opening in 2013. As a flower lover, I had decided that if the Rose Bowl parade was made into a theme park attraction, that would be the Miracle Garden. As it turns out, I wasn’t far off the mark! The entire seasonal park looks and smells fantastic, and walking around it felt dreamy. Absolutely beautiful!!

After the gardens we were wiped out, so we headed back to the hotel for a nap. There is only a four hour time change between Bali and Dubai, which isn’t too bad on our schedules, but on Wednesday we change again and head to London, where we change another four hours. I’m already sad Dubai will be such a brief stop!

Whenever we enter a new country, one of my favorite things in the first day or two we are there is to just kind of soak up the similarities and differences between where I am and what I am used to. Today I soaked in the city’s similarities to big cities back home, particularly Las Vegas, in the hustle and bustle and incredible architecture. I also loved seeing all the signs in both Arabic and English, and seeing just how very international this city is. We’ve seen people from all over the world here already! There have also been some surprises, such as seeing Christmas decorations and hearing Christmas carols played at the gardens and the mall! I had some worries (particularly as a female) about my clothing choices and other aspects of being here, but in this big city, my worries have been unfounded. Workers we have interacted with have all been helpful and friendly, and as for clothes- anything seems to go.

The World’s Tallest Building

No, it’s not the Whiz Khalifa (Rob!)… we had tickets this evening to go up inside the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building! This building officially opened in January of 2010, surpassing Taipei 101, and the Willis (Sears) Towers in height. It is 163 floors, and they have multiple observation decks. The more you are willing to pay, the higher up in the building you can go. There are also residences inside this building! We learned it takes three months to wash all their windows, and once they finish it is time to start over again!

We chose to go to the observation deck at sunset, and bought our timed entry tickets accordingly (you are only allowed 30 minutes at the top). What they DON’T tell you, however, is that the line to get on the elevator to the top (even when you prepurchased your tickets) is over an hour to go up, and another hour to go down. So, we missed sunset 😢, but the views were still lovely. The tower is also attached to the huge Dubai Mall, so we enjoyed walking thought there and having dinner in one of their food courts. I finally tried Dubai chocolate tonight- yum!

The Dubai Fountain

The Dubai Fountain is the world’s tallest performing fountain. It sits at the foot of Dubai Mall, and the water jets are laid out over an area the length of two football pitches. The fountain jets up to 22,000 gallons of water as high as 140m in the air at any one time! Because the crowd was about five or six people deep all the way around the fountains, I only caught tiny glimpses of the water show from the camera of the woman in front of me. Mostly, I stared at the backs of people’s heads and some arms. 😂 I’m sure it was a lovely show, but I can’t personally recommend it.

In all, a great first day in Dubai. Thanks for adventuring with us!