Middle East 2024 - Day 6 - 12/4/2024 - Dubai

Brad was gifted status at our hotel by a friend, which meant that we got a couple of additional perks, including complementary breakfast. Interestingly, the breakfast menu was à la carte. After breakfast we took an Uber to the Burj Khalifa, which has to be entered via the Dubai Mall for tourists. We eventually found our way there for our 10a reservation for At the Top SKY - the second highest observation deck, on the 148th floor (and correspondingly second most expensive package). It felt a little bougie to wait in a lounge area instead of the general line and get stickers labeled with "Premium", but it did make for a more comfortable experience; I also appreciated the complementary water and juice in the lounge at the top. The view was nice, though some of it felt kinda empty perhaps due to the desert landscape; I wonder if it would have been more meaningful if I was from the area or knew more about the surroundings. Nevertheless this was my favorite activity that we did in Dubai. I'll also note that the observation deck on the 124th/125th floors also had good views, and the windows there seemed bigger and amenable to better pictures (we didn't spend much time there because we were on the way down).

Our next destination was the Google office in Dubai Internet City. On the way in search of the nearby Dubai Metro station we walked by the Dubai Fountain, which looked like a bigger cousin of the Bellagio fountain; the shows only happen at night, so we didn't get to see it in action. The swanky downtown area was quite a contrast to the old city that we had walked around the night before. It took us a while to find our way to the metro station, but we eventually got there and bought 2 one-way tickets (16 AED, or $4.36 USD, total). We took the Red Line down to DIC, then walked about 20 minutes over to the Google office. Unfortunately, the workers had the day off for UAE National Day (which was a couple of days before, but Google gives 3 days off for it), so the cafe was closed. We had been counting on this for lunch so we were pretty hungry (and in Brad's case hangry) by this time. We looked around for a bit and had some snacks and drinks from a microkitchen in order to hold us over until we could get a proper meal. We then took an Uber over to the Nakheel Mall on Palm Jumeirah (an artificial archipelago in the shape of an encircled palm tree) to grab a bite in the mini food court.

After eating we took the Palm Monorail one stop to the end at the Atlantis hotel. From there we walked along the boardwalk to the Atlantis The Royal hotel and then hailed an Uber back to our hotel. I should mention that we were not allowed to walk up to the Atlantis The Royal lobby, but instead had to have the driver pick us up at the gate. Back at the hotel we played a game of Kingdomino 7x7 (which I won 128-97) before heading down to dinner at the CBar in the hotel.

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Trip highlight photos can be found here.