Well, we definitely timed our visit to this particular desert city right- the weather is incredibly perfect for us to explore and not sweat to death!

After a good sleep in, we headed out for another day of fun (our second and final) here in Dubai. We had lunch at our hotel which had a truly fantastic smash burger restaurant and ate overlooking the Al Jadaf-Dubai Canal. A scenic (and yummy) lunch! After lunch we headed by cab to another iconic Dubai spot, the giant palm tree development built into the water (the first of two!), Palm Jumeirah.

Palm Jumeirah

Well… Dubai certainly lives up to its reputation of over the top and raising the bar of what is possible. We spent this afternoon at the absolutely eye-popping spectacle that is Palm Jumeirah. I had seen pictures of this Palm tree shaped building development that a sheikh built out into the ocean in Dubai, but it did not even slightly compare to the reality of seeing it with my eyes. For reference, this is what the whole development looks like:

The Palm Jumeirah is connected to the city by a bridge that averages 100,000 cars going over it per day. It has over 30 hotels, including the Atlantis and the Atlantis Royal, the Palm, the Waldorf Astoria, the Fairmont, and the St. Regis – pretty much a “who’s who” of big name hotels. There are also over 10,000 residences including huge beautiful mansions, villas, and apartment complexes, which our tour said meant about 78,000 people living on Palm Jumeirah. When it was being designed it was originally a sun shape that had 17 km of coastline/beaches, but the sheikh said he wanted over 70 km and they successfully redesigned it to the current palm shape with over 72 km of coastline. The building of it took 7 million tons of rock quarried from the Hajar Mountains and 100 million cubic meters of sand dredged from the Persian Gulf.

Environmental impacts aside (that is a subject for a different kind of post), this place blew our minds. We went up inside The View, an observatory built specifically for the Palm, giving incredible views of both the Palm and Dubai city areas. This whole experience was so much better than our viewing from the Burj Khalifa yesterday. Much shorter lines, much cleaner windows, and it just made the entire experience feel really special. We loved seeing the Atlantis Hotel- placed in key position at the top of the Palm- as well as the very interesting building that is the new Atlantis Royal hotel.

Also of interest to me as a lover of all pools, they have a super cool pool called Aura sky pool (pics below) that sits just under the Palm viewing platform where you can swim all the way around the building exterior AND see the views. Sign me up!

There was also a cafe at the top that had featured drinks including a carmel popcorn latte… and it was delicious! If my doctors are reading this, I’m sure it was maybe not sugar free.

Dubai Mall

Although we had cut through part of it yesterday on our way to the Burj Khalifa, today we wanted to head back and see the spectacle that is the Dubai Mall. This mall has over 13 million square feet of total area and over 1,200 stores. I had thought we would walk the whole mall, but after finishing about one and 1/4 of the four floors here, we were wiped out! We did make it to see some of their major sights, including the aquarium, the ice rink, a waterfall, and and a dinosaur skeleton (pics below)! We also saw a Formula One race car used in the F1 movie with Brad Pitt, interestingly located in a watch store in the mall.

When I say Dubai has just about everything you could ever want or need, I do mean it. While in Paris, one of our favorite places for hot chocolate was the pastry shop and tearoom Angelina. It was so good, in fact, that we skipped some plans one day for Paris attractions to get more hot chocolate 😂. Naturally, Dubai has an Angelina location in the middle of the Dubai Mall. If there is a restaurant beloved by many, you will probably find it here. So dinner tonight was Angelina’s for French onion soup, goat cheese salad, and, of course, hot chocolate! It was as good as we remembered.

Our last walk through area in the mall was their version of Chinatown. Like everything else, it blew us away and went on for blocks.

We headed back to our hotel with some very good memories of our two days here. Our hotel (which we learned was the third tallest in the world!) has a lounge with good views at the top called The Vault, and we stopped by for a beverage before we went to bed and admired our own amazing views from here. A few cool pics from the ride home and our end of the night.

Tomorrow we are off to our final country (England) before we set sail for home. Thanks for adventuring with us!