On our first morning we went to Dubai Mall. My planning had seen us using the Metro to get around to places like this, but it’s a walk of about a kilometre to the nearest metro station and it was already hot by the time we were ready to go (having breakfasted late), so we did what everyone else does in Dubai – got a taxi.
Dubai Mall is vast – when first opened it was reputedly the largest in the world – and your first struggle is to navigate your way around it. I’d been there on a previous visit so had some knowledge of it, but I quickly got confused. But after wandering aimlessly around for a while we found an ATM and got Dirhams, the local currency, and then found a branch of ‘du’, the local mobile provider, and bought a sim for 100 Dhs (about £20). This will give me some local calls free, some international calls for free (they say – not going to test it), and 6 Gb of data. It’s actually for 28 days of which we will only use 7, but there you go. These days I feel lost whenever I’m in a strange place and don’t have Google Maps available. (Actually, I often am lost whenever etc, etc.)
While we were having lunch we realised that we were right by the entrance to Dubai Aquarium which I had on my list of possible things to do. It has little or nothing to do with Dubai or the wider UAE – it’s An Attraction – but given that we were there we decided to do it. it cost us about £60 each, but we enjoyed the visit. I won’t go into all the details, but we were close-up with a lot of fish. As walk-in aquariums go, this must be one of the best, and we didn’t feel short-changed. We saw a lot of fish; we fed some of them; we did a glass-bottomed boat tour so we could see more fish (or possibly the same fish from a different angle); we saw divers feeding the sharks (yes there were sharks; they’re well-fed as this stops them eating the other fish); we saw penguins (OK, birds rather than fish, but actually quite fish-like in their own way); and we saw the crocodiles being fed (once again, not fish but water-dwelling and seriously impressive so I’ll allow it).
Back at the hotel we went down for a buffet dinner and drinks at about 7 o’clock, and later went for a cocktail. Exhaustion (not the alcohol) finally overcame us at around 10 o’clock and we retired to our room for an early-ish night. Not only did we need this because of our limited sleep the night before but we were planning on being on the hotel’s free shuttle bus to the Expo at 9:10 the following morning, so the alarm was set. So we would have to get up, shower & dress, breakfast, do all the after-breakfast stuff and be in the lobby in about two hours. Who says holidays are for relaxing?