Want to be really tired? Take a 2:20 AM flight to Dubai (get there around 8:30 AM), explore a bit, and then fly out at 10:30 PM to head to Bangkok (arriving around 7:30 AM the next day). After clearing immigration, grabbing our bags, and getting a ride to our hostel in Bangkok it was around 9:30 AM, and we found out we couldn't check in until 2:00 PM. However, they did let us sleep on the couches in the common area which was awesome and much needed. That's something you can't do at a fancy hotel.
Anyway, I kind of digress. Dubai is a bit of a strange place that feels at times like just a long series of hallways surrounded by giant buildings. You can take the metro from the airport into town which is cool, but it is almost a solid mile from the Burj Khalifa stop to the actual building (through a bunch of aforementioned hallways and the Dubai Mall).
The Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world (and in all the pictures below). It really is astounding to look at up close. It has 163 floors and is 2,722 feet tall. It almost looks unreal. Naturally, it dwarfs everything around it, but that's no small feat as there are a ton of tall buildings in Dubai. For example, there are 42 buildings in Dubai taller the Hancock in Boston which is the tallest building in New England at 790 feet tall.
As I mentioned we took a red eye flight to Dubai so we were pretty tired and basically just hung around outside the Burj and inside the Dubai Mall (which is also the biggest mall in the world by square footage, can you tell they like to have the biggest things?) We tried to go out to the man made Palm Jumeirah Island (and island that looks like a palm tree) but that did't really work out because it would have taken too long to get to a good spot. We also didn't go up in the Burj though I would have liked to despite my serious fear of heights. It turns out it is really expensive and you have to book tickets several days in advance to go to one of the viewing platforms (the tallest one is on the 148th floor).
Here is the Burj Khalifa from the plaza outside the Dubai Mall. There is a fountain next to here too that has the world's largest choreographed fountain show (people in Dubai must lose sleep over what they have that isn't the biggest in the world). It's cool because of the heights the water reaches as it is shot up, but the height kind of gets lost next to the absolutely enormous building right next to you. Honestly the shows at the Bellagio in Las Vegas are less crowded, more frequent, and just as fun.
The obligatory Burj selfie that took five tries to actually get the whole building.
Sounding like a broken record by now, but it's really big.
We actually didn't notice it for a while sitting in the outside seating area of the mall food court, but that was probably due to lack of sleep.
Finally, here it is at night covered partially by clouds. We took off for the airport right after this. Thailand is awesome and we'll get to that next.
No comments:
Post a Comment