September 20

We arrived early this morning and again, we are the first cruise ship this season – and the Queen Elizabeth 2 arrived as well.

It is change over day – a new cruise segment begins – so always a busy day for the ship and a good day to be out.  One passenger who was leaving told me that they tried to stay on but the ship is completely booked.

108 degrees today.  Our plan is to go to the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building.  I booked tickets for 9 AM online so we wouldn’t have the same experience we had in Barcelona.

It is a sad day in Dubai as Shaikh Rashid, son of the ruler Shaikh Mohammed died yesterday at age 33 of a heart attack. They are observing 3 days of mourning here.

Our cab driver took us to the Burj Khalifa – and we were his first cruise passengers of the season.

The skyscraper is unbelievable.  There was no line when we got there, but you can see the way the queue would go when it is busy.  The elevator takes only 2 minute to go up to the 124th floor and you hardly feel it move.  Here are some of the views from there.

This is from the bottom through a skylight

This one is from the 125th floor looking down

Unbelievable place!

As you leave there is the story of how it was built – one floor added every three days, and the whole project took only 5 years!

After that we went to the Dubai Mall – which has 1200 shops.  We went into a supermarket first to buy camels milk and camels milk chocolate (chocolate is delicious, by the way – I don’t drink milk, but Norm thought it was OK). And there is this part of the store for non Muslims.

Here are a few other shots of the mall.  We had lunch there in a middle eastern restaurant, both bought some shoes and I had to go to Sephora.  There are all of the American stores and restaurants, including Cheesecake Factory.  In fact, if you didn’t see people in robes and headresses, you would think you were in any American city!  The signs are all in Arabic and English. There is an Olympic size ice skating rink, a streetscape with retractable roof, an aquarium and an underwater zoo!

Amazing when there was the call to prayer you heard it across the mall

This is a fountain with these silver diver statues

another view of the waterfall

Off to the lifeboat drill (again!) and then we will sail for Fujairah, UAE.