It was already very bright when we got up at 05:30.  We cleaned up and took in the morning view of Burj Khalifa and the fountains, sans people this time.  The scale of the building was hard to fathom; it looks like a giant needle going up into the sky.  We went to breakfast at the Club Lounge, and it was completely empty at 07:00.  It was already quite warm outside, and we knew it was going to get only warmer.  Since our day tour didn’t start for a little bit, we went downstairs and walked around the fountain area and a giant mall on the northeast side of the fountains.  There was a little bit of everything, western, middle eastern, and everything in between, including a Nando’s.  Interestingly, on the inside of the mall, the stores were not totally closed up - there’s no way this could have flown in the US.

At 09:00 we met our guide, Liliana from Venezuela.  We were set to take a helicopter photo tour over the city, but had some time before that, so we drove to a souk that had been modernized, and Liliana explained a lot about the country and how it went from being a couple villages on the desert to an international city.  80 percent of the population is not native to the UAE, they are foreigners who come to work on work visas.  When they don’t have work to do, they get sent back to their country.  So basically there is zero percent unemployment, and that explains why the mall stores didn’t have to be completely closed up.

There are seven emirates in the UAE, with Abu Dhabi the biggest, by far.  It has most of the oil, too.  The Burj Khalifa was renamed because Dubai needed financial assistance during construction, and Abu Dhabi effectively bailed Dubai out, but changed the name of the building to something that was less Dubai-specific and more UAE generic.  Liliana got a couple calls from her son, who “needed” help with something, and we could hear her conversation basically telling him where to get some food and that his father would be home shortly, and that she had to work and not to bug her during work.  She apologized profusely, and Justin said “no pasa nada” (more or less, “don’t sweat it”), and she was taken aback.

Speaking of languages, almost everyone speaks English in Dubai, as there are people from all over the world (Pakistan, Philippines amongst the most prominent), and English is the language that bridges all the various countries.  Liliana was an archaeology major, and worked in Lebanon and Syria in the early 2000s, where she met her husband.  He works for Emirates, so they moved to Dubai.  While Abu Dhabi has all the oil money, Dubai has all the tourism and foreign investment.  In addition to the people on work visas who are undoubtedly remitting money to their home countries, there are also uber-rich people who have “golden visas.”  No matter the type of visa, it is only that, as there is no path to citizenship for anyone born outside the UAE, or even their children.  

At one of the fancy hotels we passed, Liliana pointed out some of the six and seven figure cars, and mentioned that the true sign of wealth is a license plate with as low a number as possible; single digit license plates cost 8 figures.  The “7 star” hotel in Dubai, the Burj Al Arab, was smaller than we expected.  It did have a helicopter pad on the roof, however.  In that area there were tons of man-made canals nearby.  In the same general vicinity was Palm Island, an entire development of man-made islands designed to look like a date palm from the air.  Liliana told us that it was built in 5-6 years; we wondered how long they have been widening the 5 Freeway in San Diego?

The whole city was so random and eclectic - all artificial, yet still aesthetically pleasing and interesting, not to mention clean and safe.  We got to Atlantis on Palm Island a little before 10:00 to check in and take our safety briefing.  They weighed everyone so as to allocate weight most efficiently on the chopper.  We wondered where we’d be sitting, and whether we’d even have window seats.  We had no clue why we needed to be so early, as the safety briefing was done by 10:20 for our 10:50 flight, so we spent a long time just waiting.  The people in our safety briefing left before us, with two other people.  We had no clue what was about to happen, and whether we’d be alone or not.  The fact no one else was in the waiting area seemed to be a decent clue.

We ended up having a helicopter to ourselves.  There were no open doors or windows, so we had to deal with lots of reflections off of the glass.  It was incredibly hazy outside - thank goodness Adobe Lightroom has a “dehaze” function, but that can do only so much.  Our pilot (we think from South Africa) told us that this wasn’t unusual at all, that this was a fairly normal day.  On our flight we went north past the Burj Al Arab and downtown, where we turned around near airport and came back south out over the water.  We flew past “The World”, another artificial island chain, one that’s supposed to look like the globe, but we couldn’t quite make out the pattern.  The pilot pointed out the world’s third-largest yacht, to which Justin quipped “maybe it’s the largest one that hasn’t been confiscated.”  The pilot got a kick out of that.

Overall, the flight was about 25 minutes.  We were back in the car a little before 11:30, and we took some photos from Palm Island, then went over to the Miracle Garden.  On our original itinerary we didn’t think we were going to be able to do this, but got the opportunity once we abandoned Abu Dhabi for the second night in Dubai.  When we told Liliana about how and why we changed our itinerary, she mentioned that Abu Dhabi is more strict, and that she needed to get tested every 14 days for her health pass so that she can work in Abu Dhabi.

It was crazy hot when we got out of the car at the Miracle Garden.  We waited in the shade for a little bit whilst Liliana got her ticket (we already had ours).  Inside, she led the way, since we knew nothing about it.  She led us in a counter-clockwise loop around the garden.  The garden was full of tons of morning glories of various colors, sunflowers, and a bunch of other stuff.  Near the famous Emirates “plane”, we saw a guy propose (successfully) - it was pretty awesome to see, and very surprising, probably most of all for her.

There was a smurf area, replete with the theme music, Gargamel, and more.  On the rare occasions when the wind would pick up, we were much more comfortable.  The shade was much more comfortable as well.  Supposedly at least, it wasn’t even “that” hot - about 85 degrees Fahreinheit, but it seemed far warmer than that to us.  We spent maybe 45-60 minutes there, and then came back to the hotel, arriving around 13:30.  We went to the Club Lounge for lunch.  There were a decent amount of people there, maybe ⅓ full.  We enjoyed a bunch of water, plus some Diet Pepsi for Justin.

Then we looked on TripAdvisor for things to do.  Almost everything involved going on a boat, a helicopter, or out to the desert, which neither appealed to us or would take more time than we had.  So we decided to just go to the enormous mall next door, which theoretically had an aquarium and an ice rink amongst everything else.  Inside we actually got lost, it was so big.  We walked maybe, at most, ¼ of the mall.  The aquarium was pretty cool, at least from what we could see from the free areas in the mall itself.  It was probably better if we paid the entry fee, but we were fine with seeing what we could see from the public areas.  There were hammerhead sharks, sawtooth sharks, lemon sharks, stingrays, spotted rays, and rays that had leopard markings.  At one point we saw a diplodocus skeleton in a souk next to a Cheesecake Factory - this seemed to sum up Dubai in one sentence.  Whatever you want to see, it’s probably here - unless you want to see something natural.

We got back to the hotel around 16:20.  Justin copied over photos whilst Crystal took a catnap.  One item of note is that there was an overpowering smell in the hotel’s common areas, we think being pumped in through the air filtration units.  We walked over to the other mall/souk, on the south side of the fountains.  Inside, it was mostly restaurants.  There was a Timeout Market that reminded us of Liberty Station in San Diego, with all sorts of eclectic choices.  But we wanted some Nando’s, especially because Crystal had never eaten there before.

As it turns out, the menu in Dubai is substantially different, so we didn’t end up getting Nando’s after all.  Instead, we came back to the room, very tired.  We were just trying to stay awake until 21:00.  Around 18:53, it was like a bomb went off; we weren’t sure what it was, but it jolted our bodies fully awake.  We wondered if it had something to do with the last sundown of Ramadan.  We thought the first fountain show would be at 19:00, but that didn’t happen, so we went to the Club Lounge prior to 19:30.  It was fairly full, but we got one of the last window seats.  The first song was “Time to Say Goodbye,” the one that was in the original Bellagio Fountain commercial.  We had to do a vertical video for once, but we had a legit excuse, as the Burj Khalifa was too tall to fit in the frame otherwise.

For dinner, we had some Chicken Tikka Masala and some Lamb Kebabs.  We both agreed that Curry & More is better.  We were drinking “free” cocktails, enjoying a light breeze, and watching fountain shows every 30 minutes - it was tough to beat.  As if on cue, a woman sat down less than 2 meters away, upwind, and started smoking.  In instant karma, a family with 3 crying kids came up 2 meters away from her, trying to get a photo of the kids in front of the Burj Khalifa, and it was a disaster.  The place started to empty out around 20:30.  Our waitress was flustered from a long busy day, and we hoped it would start to improve for her.  We discussed songs that would be good for a fountain show, and came up with Bohemian Rhapsody, Final Countdown, and Chop Suey.  The penultimate show was Thriller at 22:30, and the last one was the Mission Impossible theme at 23:00.  After that we went straight to sleep.