Caught by the magic of the Middle East

Dubai, a shopping heaven...

Hey all welcome to our last entry!!!

After a long time of humidity and Thai food we are quite happy to experience a desert feeling again. Dubai is one of the most influencing cities in the United Arab Emirates due to its growing economy and wealth. One of the main status symbols is the highest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. If you are born in Dubai, Sheikh Muhammad bin Raschid Al Maktum provides you a home for you and your family. However, if you look at the population of Dubai you realize that almost 90% are foreigners. However, you still see many Emiratis where men wearing white robes and their wife’s are covered in black.
Although the skyline looks like a part of the future Dubai has still houses of living with a strong oriental flair according to their sand colors, round windows and lots of flowers and palm trees. Next to that you have huge shopping malls that contain really all kind of shops and articles your heart dreams of…especially mine.
For that reason we went on the first day to the Mall of the Emirates, which has next to millions of shops also an artificial ski hall! I went crazy and I think I spent too much money here. Mike couldn’t stop me this time…

220 000 square meters of shops!!

Let's go and have fun in the snow...

The idea that someone would be that crazy to build up a ski hall in the middle of the desert was so fascinating that we couldn’t resist the temptation and got us a ticket for a Arabian “Hüttengaudi”, do zorbing, “rodln” and going up the artificial mountain via a chair lift.

A chair lift fixed on the roof...

Rodln...

Snowboarder with kaftan.

The ice channel, called mountain thrill, is really exciting. This was the fastest and best “rodl” ride we ever did.

A clearly astonishing experience is the contrast, when you walk out from -10°C (cold nose, no feelings in my feet) to +50°C – it feels a little bit like walking straight into an oven…

The next day we had enough of snow and went to the Jumeira Beach Park, a huge park with access to the white beach and the crystal clear water (>30°C). It is not allowed to take photos at the beach and as a woman you have to wear a swim suit. Nevertheless, no one accepted this rule. Spending the morning on the beach we realized that the women here are really looking, like in the fairytale of “1000 and one night”; no wonder most of them are covered during the day, although they haven’t covered their incredible beautiful eyes so the whole thing is pointless. Mike even saw one or two ladies which were wearing just a g-string under their black robes – even strong religious constraints cannot prevent the slut in some of us to break free ;)

Jumeira Beach Park

In the afternoon we went to Burj Khalifa. As I said before that is the tallest building in the world with a height of more than 800 m providing 200 floors of luxurious apartments, congress centers, hotels, Armani mansions, etc. Imagine, its surface equals 17 soccer fields and it has more than 24000 glass windows, from where they collect more than 15 million liters of condense water a year. The elevator that brings you up to the observation platform (just 124th floor) takes just 1 min…yes you ears are plugged when u arrive there.

We could see the Burj Khalifa already from our hotel!

The park infront of the Burj Khalifa

infront of it...

Let's go on the top!

Have a look on the skyline...and the sand...

 On the observation deck (452 m) you feel already very high but if you look up you realize that it can be even higher…

Look up on 124 floor...

...and at night...

 Next to this astonishing monument, you have again… a shopping mall (the biggest in the world)…Dubai mall!

Dubai mall from inside...

...from the top...

...and at night!

 My shopping sensor was activated again and my little demon inside forced me to go into the GUESS by Marciano shop…
Finally outside the shopping mall, u can experience one of the greatest water fountain shows in the world; it starts playing classical music along with a water fountain ballet dancing to the music.

That was definitely a great final for our journey and we are happy to see u guys again and share some of our exiting stories and pictures (and videos) with you!

 Kisses jiny and Mike