Everything's bigger in Dubai

I am now to the half way point of our trip...I know it has taken me forever!  A lot has been going on, more on that later.

It is America on steroids.  It’s like the Texas of the world…”everything is bigger in Dubai”!

I imagined this is what life would be like living in the Jetson’s world only without flying cars.  It was so modern, clean, and bizarre.  Skyscrapers, gigantic billboards, skiing in the desert, man-made islands, malls (lots of them and of course the biggest)…Dubai has it all.  

There is lots of money, money, money!

We had a blast exploring.  We started with a city tour; visiting the Burj Arab (tallest hotel in the world), Palm Island (manmade islands in the shape of a palm tree), Emirates Mall with the indoor ski park, and the Burj Khalifa (tallest building in the world).  

We went to the top of the Burj Khalifa and what a crazy sight.  It’s the desert…so you can’t see much because of the dust and if you can see…well it’s the desert so passed the city it’s the desert.  Not a whole lot to see but it is the tallest building in the world so one must go to the top.  Oh yeah, I can’t forget to mention the elevator.  It was a bizarre experience!  Going up was so odd, that I wanted to record the ride down…guess what?  The ride down was super tame!  So I did not get a recording of the psychedelic ride up, but I will tell you…the elevator is pitch dark and neon lights spastically running around the walls while Arab music is blasting.  In other words, there was no doubt that you were not at home and that they designed and built the tallest building and this was their elevator.

Then we decided when in Dubai, one must ski so we went back to the mall and acted like 8 year olds in the ski park which was absolutely freezing!!  We are used to snowboarding outside where there is a sun and let me tell you….the sun makes a HUGE difference!  We had no idea it would be sooo cold inside and now I understand why they have 2 hour tickets available for purchase…because no one in their right mind wants to be inside for more than 2 hours!  We couldn’t even bear it that long; we enjoyed the park for a whole hour before I was almost completely numb.  Since we had burned sooo many calories playing for an hour, we treated ourselves to some Cold Stone and then did a little shopping before getting back on the ship and crashing for the night!  The next day, new people boarded the ship and we set sail for Oman.