The challenge with writing a blog post every day, usually late at night, is that sometimes I fall asleep while writing, or my blog posts on its own before I can edit and spell check. Sometimes I go back and read what I wrote, and my writing is so basic… Please forgive me! I have a goal to end every day with a summary and some days I’m so exhausted that its hard to produce something with more spunk!

Today we had such an adventure. We crammed into a taxi and road over across town to see the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. If you ever want to go to the top, you have to buy tickets online at least a week in advance, otherwise they sell out. It is expensive for what you get, but then again, it’s the tallest building in the world and we had to go up to the top. What amazed me was how fast the elevator ride was. It took 70 seconds to go 124 floors! The view from the top was interesting, but not exciting. Dubai is growing and there is construction going on everywhere, however the town around the Burj is not full. There are a lot of empty fields and empty buildings and the landscape is not dense.

The Dubai Mall is attached to the Burj and I believe is the biggest mall in the world. There are 1200 stores in one location! They have every shop you can imagine and more. They also have an aquarium, waterfall, ice skating rink, movie theater, Sega theme park, and KidZania – a place where kids can be dropped off for hours and get to be industrious. The high end luxury brand stores were everywhere, with children’s stores for all the high end fashion brands. How many people shop there? I was fascinated by the sheer volume of choices.

After we shopped around a bit and had some lunch, we were picked up in two land cruisers for the touristy part of our vacation – the Desert Safari. We road out to the desert and went four wheeling through the sand dunes. It was such a thrill ride, more thrilling and scarier than a roller coaster! Patti Beth and I were so sick from motion sickness that we thought we were going to lose our cookies! Luckily we stopped for a photo break at the top of the dunes before driving off into the sunset!


They drove us to a camp where we got to ride camels,


have henna art done on our hands, watch two dance shows, and eat a delicious buffet dinner. We also got to dress up in burkas and thobes and take pictures and feel what it’s like to have your face covered. I found it to be stifling on my face, although I think the full body cover would simplify choosing what to wear each day. And would be quite comfortable. The boys also loved hiking up the sand dune and running and jumping all the way down. I think they had a fabulous adventure. It reminded us of a Hawaiian Luau but desert style!

The driver took us back to the mall from where he picked us up. The malls stay open until midnight and they are packed late into the evening. Since there isn’t alcohol served, I think the mall provides entertainment for locals and tourists alike. We stayed and watched the musical Dubai Fountain show and walked around the mall a bit more before heading back to our condo.

We had quite an amazing experience together today that I think we’ll talk about and remember for quite some time.