Monday 18th to Friday 22nd May 2026
For our journey home, we had chosen to stay over for a few days in Dubai to break the journey and allow some jet-lag recovery time. Fortunately, the war situation regarding the USA and Iran, seemed to be a bit more settled for the time being.
Monday 18th May:
Our flight from Auckland to Dubai took 17 hours, arriving in Dubai at 5:30am. After checking in o our hotel, being a little tired, to say the least, we chose to catch up on sleep rather than do any exploring.
Tuesday 19th May:
By crikey it is hot in Dubai. The forecast gave 38 degrees and it was every one of those. To be out of the shade was unbearable, so we decided to give public transport a miss and took a taxi to The Burj Khalifa, which is attached to the Dubai Mall.
The Dubai Mall, is astonishing. It is absolutely enormous and its multiple air-conditioned levels have hundreds of shops, with the high-class/designer shops mainly on the ground floor. Every top class retailer that you can imagine was present.
The mall also has a huge waterfall (two, really), an ice-rink, a two-storey sea aquarium, a (real) dinosaur and a cinema. There are also many concierge desks where you can leave your shopping and have it delivered to your hotel (for a fee of course).
One shop had a real F1 car which had been used in filming the movie, F1:
After wearing out our feet, we made our way to the Burj Khalifa, which is the tallest building in the world. Here, you can pay a lot to get to the 124/125th floors or a small fortune more to go up further. We chose to limit ourselves to just “a lot”.
The lift journey from basement level to floor 124 was amazingly quick. It must have been the equivalent of being fired out of a cannon, but without the g-force. There must be some secret stuff going on, as the only problem was our ears popping with the change in air pressure.
Part of the area that you access is outdoors. It is amazing to experience looking down on what are in fact very high skyscrapers. We could see some of the hotels had swimming pools on the roof.
The area was extremely quiet and at some points we appeared to be the only people there. There seemed to be two factors at play here, the first being the war with Iran and the proximity of the Strait of Hormus, the second being that the cooler season is over and apparently Dubai does normally get a little quieter at this time of the year. Nevertheless, it was a little disconcerting.
We later returned to earth and the Dubai Mall, where after a while, we saw the superb music and fountain display in the artificial lake by the mall. Just amazing!
The display is lit up at night, but we were just too tired to hang on any longer. We saw two shows before calling it a day.
Wednesday 20th May:
After a full-on day yesterday, we decided to just go to the “View Palm Jumeirah” today. A viewpoint which overlooks the Palm Jumeirah which is a huge, artificial island, built into the sea in the shape of a palm leaf. It is the size of a city in its own right and has many hotels and residential villas, each with a waterfront access.
The viewpoint is on top of a hotel, looking over the palm fronds, from the central stem. This again has a shopping mall beneath it and on the next to the top floor, an infinity swimming pool.
Sadly, when we were there, the area suffered poor visibility as a result of a sandstorm, so our photographs were not as good as we would have liked. We would also have liked a ride on the monorail to the outer crescent, but this was closed for maintenance at the time of our visit.
Conditions on the open terrace were also uncomfortable, with a fairly strong, hot wind blowing and very little shade, so we didn’t stay long before returning down to the mall and exploring this a little.
We also saw the Dubai Frame a few times, but didn’t visit. You can ascend to the upper level and walk across the glass floor from one side to the other.
Thursday 21st May:
There are many places we would have loved to visit, but with any outdoor exploration being too uncomfortable to contemplate, we chose to visit the Museum of the Future for our final day.
This is another huge building which is in the shape of a sort of elongated doughnut. There is no internal supporting structure, so the shell provides all the strength, despite being filled with windows in the shape of calligraphy.
The contents of the museum were interesting, but the main attraction was the building itself.
With an early (very early) start in the morning, we chose to take it easy for the rest of the day, having a swim in the hotel rooftop pool. The hotel was just across from a new mosque which we were told would be all lit-up if we viewed it after dark, which we did. It is a beautiful building:
That is all for today. TTFN and until the next trip, see-u-later.
"See-u-Later" 