Day 34 - Wednesday 15th June

Today's plan was to use the Big Bus City Tours to visit many of the sites in Dubai. This is a service that uses double-decker buses that you can get on and off at twenty different places.

There are two loops: a blue loop that covers the Jumeirah Beach area and a red route that covers the city. The two loops intersect at two locations so you can change from one route to the other. If you were to stay on the bus (without getting off at any of the stops), it would take more than 2 hours 30 minutes to do the blue loop and more than 1 hour 30 minutes to do the red loop.

The buses all have air conditioning at the lower level and some have air conditioning in the front part of the upper deck. When you get on the bus, they give you a headset that you plug into a control box on the back of the seat in front of you to get a running commentary on the sites you pass. The commentary is available in eight languages of which English is option 1.

We had an earlier breakfast today at the hotel buffet so we could get the first bus at 9am. It picks up passengers at various hotels around the area and you pay at the last hotel. We decided to get a two-day pass so we could do some of the sites today and the remainder tomorrow morning.

Our first stop was at the Atlantis Hotel complex which is at the end of the Jumeirah Palm. The Palm is a huge man-made peninsula in the shape of a palm leaf. It is claimed that it's the only man-made structure that's visible from space. (I wonder whether the Great Wall of China might be another one.)

There is a branch of the metro next to the motorway running out to the end of the Palm. Towards the end of the palm, the motorway goes into a tunnel that our audio guide said was more than 1km long.

There are already dozens of hotels and apartment blocks on the palm. The Atlantis is probably the most spectacular because of its architecture and position. It contains several tourist attractions with a marine theme including a water park and dolphin show.

We skipped a few attractions and stopped next at Dubai Mall which is a large shopping centre in the Jumeirah Beach area. In fact, they claim that it's the biggest shopping centre in the world with over one million square metres of floor space.

As if that is not big enough, its centrepiece is the Burj Khalifa - the tallest building in the world. It has more than 160 storeys and is 828m high. Needless to say, it tends to dominate the Dubai skyline.

It was always one of our plans in Dubai to visit the Burj Khalifa and go up to the observation deck that's located on level 124. Yesterday we'd tried to book online but had no success because all the available time slots were booked out.

When we reached the booking counter at the bottom of the tower, we found out they had tickets available then and there. So we bought tickets for an immediate visit rather than having to come back again tomorrow.

The experience of travelling up to the observation platform was well organised with displays, walkways, viewing points and attentive staff. The elevator that took us up 124 floors hardly seemed to be moving except that we did have problems with our ears popping with the altitude change.

Originally we'd planned to book to go up the tower early in the morning tomorrow before the heat haze set in so we would have a better view. Because we went up the tower late morning, there was already a visibility problem because of the haze.

Part of the observation deck is open to the sky. It consists of a timber decking with glass walls that are about 3m to 4m high. There is a handrail at about 1m above the floor and so I held onto it while I was taking photos of the city below and into the hazy distance.

The other half of the observation deck was inside the structure of the building with floor to ceiling windows. I still felt better when I was hanging onto something. In this area, there was (as you might expect) a souvenir shop. There was also a toilet area and so I decided to go to the loo so I could say I'd been there at the highest loo in the world.

Looking down on Dubai was an amazing feeling. The skyscrapers below us looked tiny and many of the features below us looked like toys. It was also surprising to see so many empty areas of sand between all the buildings and other developments.

Back on ground level, we enquired at one of the many information counters about the famous Dubai fountain which is part of this shopping mall complex. They told us that, although most of the fountain performances are in the evening, there is one during the day at 1pm and they suggested that we should have lunch at one of the cafes that overlook the fountain.

We took their advice and had a nice lunch at a cafe one level up from the fountain. Just before 1pm, I went out on their terrace to admire the fountain display and to take photos.

The information desk had also told us how to find our way back to the spot where the hop-on-hop-off bus would pick us up. We stayed on the bus until we reached the stop where we could change from the blue route to the red route.

The plan was to catch the bus to the river that runs through the centre of Dubai to catch the river cruise that runs up and then down the river to see the sights of the city. It turned out that we only just made it to the wharf in time to catch the ferry - although I suspect that they were waiting for the bus to arrive.

It was a great way to see the city. The ferry was air-conditioned at the lower deck where we were. The top deck had better views but all the seats were taken by the time I discovered it.

After the cruise, we continued on the red route bus circuit. At the end-point of the route, we waited for almost 30 minutes before the bus set off again. Perhaps they were getting back on schedule. It would have been better if they had told us what was going on rather than the driver just disappearing for all that time.

At a subsequent stop, we changed back to the blue route to head back towards the Jumeirah Beach area. We swapped to the blue route because we wanted to stop at the Jumeirah Mosque.

When we got to that stop, we were the only ones getting off. The driver told us that he was the last bus from that stop and that the mosque was closed today. When we told him that we knew all that and we only wanted to take a few photos, he looked at us as if we were both mad.


After taking photos, we had ice creams from the nearby mall and hailed a taxi to take us back to Dubai Mall. To fill in time at the mall, Suzy checked out the shops while I looked at the indoor ice skating rink and the indoor waterfalls.

The reason for going back to the mall was to see the Dubai Fountain at night. Although it was only 7:30pm, it was dark enough to appreciate the difference from the daytime fountain we'd seen at lunch time.

We caught a taxi back to our hotel and had a buffet dinner with wine at the hotel. It had been another busy day.