Trevor & Jonathans Cruise & Trip to the Far East and Australia 2016

Day 17 - Thursday May 26th 2016 - Dubai, UAE

The alarm went off at 0700 this morning and the ship was already in port. Jonathan had a really sleepless night with a pain in his shoulder god knows where from but it kept him awake but for now it was time to get up and get moving.

After a swift departure from our cabin we made for the twoseventy lounge at the back of deck five and ate a small breakfast whilst waiting for our departure group number to be called (we were in group 22).

No sooner had we eaten our sausage sandwiches it was time to leave the Ovation for 16 days. We made our way down to the embarkation deck and went ashore.

I think we were both expecting the extreme humidity of the last few days on the boat as we made our way down the gang plank but thanks to a

healthy breeze it was actually not that bad. We were not out in the sun to long though as we were soon inside a big shed with line after line of luggage stretching out in front of us. We found row 22 and our cases and with what must have been the smoothest exit of any cruise ship ever we left the care of Royal Caribbean (for now).

The queue for a taxi into the centre of Dubai was quite sizable, snaking around a large turning corner, a good hundred or so people in front of us with no shade. The queue moved constantly though and after no more than half an hour we were soon racing our way to our hotel The Pullman Inn Dubai.

We were really lucky at check in, not expecting to be able to go to a room at all and never asking we found ourselves presented with two key cards for room 533 and were ushered up to our room, fantastic! It’s a modern hotel the Pullman, more than nice enough and once our bags had made it up and we had sorted ourselves out a little we left for the shopping centre next door to see what it had to offer. It is lovely when you get off a boat and suddenly everything is unfamiliar again. It makes it all seem like an adventure once more when you are exploring things for the first time. It’s also nice to be able to walk longer distances again as well, especially in the air conditioned malls.

Now I had been telling Trevor that Dubai was the western oasis of the middle east and that it would be much more western than eastern but the mall took him by complete surprise. Think of every American well-known brand that you can think of, then add on the best of British or the large multiples then mix in a small bit of Arab and you get the malls of Dubai. In our small mall next to the hotel we had Debenhams, M&S, American Eagle, Superdry….blah blah blah. The most excitement for us came when we saw a PF Changs restaurant…..no prizes for guessing where we will be eating tonight!

We were not in the mall to shop, we can’t…. ongoing airline weight allowances will not let us but we walked through staggered at the array of shops and this is not even one of the well-known malls that Dubai is known for. We headed for the metro station (underground/monorail system) and got on the red line with our next stop being the Burg Khalifa/ Dubai Mall.

As the train travelled from underground to over ground Dubai became clearer. It is literally littered with hotels. They just seem to be everywhere you look. As we hurtled toward the centre things just seem to get taller and taller. The main road has six lanes of traffic flowing in each direction, yes that’s right your looking at a road width of twelve lanes going through a city centre! Not only is Dubai hot and full of American brands but it’s also full of cranes and buildings that are still rising from the ground. There seemed to be a building going up everywhere we looked, surely they can’t out do the tallest building in the world that is here already…. can they? I’d really love to know the square meterage of all the glass that is in Dubai, everything is glass here, well everything in the modern city part anyway and around the burg khalifa alone there were another four towers being erected, even more glass.

We got off the Metro at the Dubai Mall and had to walk quite away down tube bridges that cross those wide roads that cut across the city to get from the station into the mall. Now you might be asking why go to the mall? Well it seems that Dubai has got a very different idea to what a mall should be from most of the rest of the world. The malls they build always have something going on in them that makes them unique. The Dubai Mall’s claim to fame is its waterfall with sculptures of men diving into and falling down the falls, really impressive to see but the main star attraction really has to be the underwater zoo. Yes, they don’t call it an aquarium oh no, that’s not Dubai, this is a zoo and woe betide anyone that calls it any different. When you see the outside of the main take a zoo really does do it justice. Its roughly five stories high and god knows how wide but it has sharks and rays and enormous fish…. the pressure on that glass must be immense but hey it’s so impressive to see. This is also not the only trick that the Dubai mall has to offer, oh no. Outside the mall sits a lake and within that lake is the Dubai Fountain. Think The Bellagio Fountains of Las Vegas and you are there. At one o’clock in the afternoon (in the evening too) the fountains come alive and choreograph themselves to whatever the tune is they are dancing to. Overhead across this lake you can zip line right over the top of this explosion of water whilst the sheer size and scale of the tallest building in the world is kind of lost to the haze in the sky. Tomorrow we are going up to the top of the Burg Khalifa but today in all honestly it looks tall but not as tall as other buildings we have seen. I think it’s because at the moment nothing else tall is built around it so it makes it difficult to scale and the haze and heat make the top all but disappear. The dancing fountains were very impressive and we really enjoyed the light spray from the crashing water as they danced. We stood right next to the railings enjoying this spray cooling us from the mid afternoon sun.

Fountains over, we headed back to the air conditioning of the mall and soup for lunch. The soup was good, Thom Kha (coconut Thai soup with chilli and prawns), it was a real taste sensation and just the right amount of food for us without feeling heavy and stuffed as we have on the boat.

Next it was time to head out of mall number one and with another quick ride on the metro we headed off to Mall number two, The Mall of the Emirates. As we headed out on the metro the view outside was very different to what we had seen before. This was more industrial, more one level architecture. We passed cement works and furniture stores of every description and car garages galore. Not just any car garages mind you, these were for Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, numerous independent dealers all selling exotic cars (and a few Toyotas as well). We made it to the mall and walked around again taking in all the brands from Abercrombie, Harvey Nicholls, every single couture fashion house you can think of but its piece de resistance has to be its snow slope. Yes, yes, yes a snow slope! This is not just a little play slope either, it has an indoor chairlift, yes an indoor chairlift……absolutely Arab bonkers!! I really really wish they did malls like this back in the UK, I really do, even Trevor would want to go shopping.

We walked around for a good few hours before taking the metro (and it was a very busy metro this time around) all the way back to our hotel. We stopped off at the mall next door to our temporary base to seek out DHL. We want to post our suits back to the UK to save lugging them around but with a quote of £170 its cheaper for us to pay for extra luggage. We are going to try the post office and see if this is any cheaper (we have looked online and it should be) but of not they are coming with us all the way. When we could have left them on the boat it is rather annoying to say the least.

We chilled at the hotel for about half an hour, reading up on the best bits of Dubai and where to go etc. planning the next day after we have been to the top of the tallest building in the world. It’s also looking like we will be meeting up with Matt Baron, a friend from way back who is in the process of moving to Abu Dhabi as we write this blog.

After that small break it was time to head out to the mall again (how many time have I written that word now??) and our meal at PF Changs…..always a favourite.

Yes, we had the lettuce wraps, yes we had the dynamite prawns (yum yum yum) and then we both had prawns again in an main courses all being absolutely expertly cooked, just wonderful and properly seasoned (not like some of the food on the boat). We were stuffed again but hey, with the price of booze in the hotels in Dubai (you can only buy alcohol in hotels over here, maybe that why there are so many??) we won’t be drinking that much so we don’t get to put those calories on for a few days at least.

We walked around the mall for a bit (there was a real theme to this day) mainly just to walk off some of the food but Jonathan ended up trying on two shirts but left empty handed deciding that the weight limit on our suitcases was a much more pressing issue so better see what we would end up doing with the suits first.

That was our day, a god day, we have seen some of the must do’s in Dubai already and we spent the later part of the evening in the room mainly writing this blog and researching more on Dubai.

Can’t wait to see what surprises tomorrow brings.