A Day in Dubai

3/15/2016

By: Elise Aust

Flying through Dubai requires at least a one-day stopover if you have never seen the city. The idea and the engineering feat that follows demands your attention.
On my way to Egypt, flying Emirates Airlines, I spent 24 hours in Dubai. What an amazing city! With such a short amount of time; I hired a driver/guide to show me as much as possible.
Our first stop was the harbor, with the vast number of yachts surrounded by unique looking skyscrapers filled with high end apartments, offices and shops.
Then to the amazing white sand beaches, beautiful blue waters and the Burj Al Arab Jumeirah sitting atop a manmade peninsula like a giant sail. This hotel is so exclusive; you cannot even go into the lobby without a reservation!

We then drove to see one of the many unique manmade islands; the Palm. The majority of this island community is filled with private homes, but at the very top of the stem shape sits the Atlantis Dubai. It is much larger than the Atlantis in the Bahamas!

Our next stop was the Dubai Mall. This mall is like no other in the world. It is extremely large; large enough to have indoor snow skiing with a chair lift! In addition, it has an extremely large aquarium and a gold vending machine. Yes, that is correct. A vending machine that dispenses gold!

Before heading to the airport, we visited the tallest building in the world; the Burj Khalifa.
By far, the best part of my day was “At the Top”

The views you get and the feeling you have looking out a 147th floor window are mind blowing. The building actually has 165 floors but the top 18 are private residences and not available to the public.

I have included some pictures looking down and over the city. The haze you see in the pictures is not from pollution, but from sand. This is an extremely clean city and so new and state of the art that pollution is not an issue.