souk – silverfox175
The mall was HUGE – with waterfalls, ice ring, aquarium, its own souk, and 1200 hundred shops that made us feel over whelmed (well they overwhelm me!).
Electric baby chairs – place the child in the seat, switch it on, and it rocks back and forth with a very similar movement as it would have felt before it was born.
Water down a waterfall – the water fell for two or three floors.
A lone diver
This attempts to show the size of this indoor waterfall.
Of course if the waterfall gives you cold feet go ice skating in the Olympic size ice rink. . . .
In addition to 1200 shops you can walk around the Souk.
Souk corridors lead to a centre . . .
I didn’t know that dinosaurs were blue. . . . . .
More Souk
A rather large fish tank – so large that you can walk through it via a tunnel, and watch the fish from within one of the largest aquariums in the world.
The coloured lights in the picture above, are lights from various shops, reflected in the glass.
Only the chips are missing.
We had a drink across from the aquarium wall.
Walk outside the mall and you will find it very difficult to get the next building in the one frame – the tallest building in the world (at the moment, as there is another being built in Jeddah, so of course Dubai is planning a larger one again.)
We saw an advert for a trip to the 124 th floor, the observation deck, at a rate of $140 for the two of us, so we thought we’d bite the bullet and experience the trip.
On showing up at the counter we were asked for $400 for two tickets, apparently they have different prices for different times. The $140 was the most unsocial time so we gave it a miss and I downloaded the view via Google . . . $400 to look out of a window was a bit steep (excuse the pun).
The lake was impressive, but the fountain was not working during our visit.
Another old style (but very new) Souk, with views of the man made lake.
Inside this Souk we found a small supermarket and the food was inexpensive considering the very up market position. This building also housed an hotel.
A shot of the old style building come hotel & Souk, from across the lake.
We docked in Dubai, UAE, the largest man made harbour in the world, our last port of call before we left the ship.
As we entered the harbour I could see a familiar sight ahead, the vessel with the red funnel, in the middle of the picture.
The other white vessels along side belonged to various UAE dignitaries – more weekenders.
The cruise terminal with the city in the background.
A closer view of the vessel with the red funnel – Queen Elizabeth 11. She was bought to convert in to a floating hotel similar to the Queen Mary in Los Angeles, as yet it hasn’t happened. I must admit she does look like a ship and not a box boat or a block of flats . . . . sign of age I suppose.
The view from our room at the Pullman Hotel.
Our hotel is built on top of a shopping centre . . . .
A short metro ride to the nearby Dubai Creek we found the ‘Old Souk’, which we thought was not as attractive as the souk in Muscat.
Tomorrow we will visit the largest shopping centre in the world, I don’t know if I am looking forward to the visit or not . . . . .