Holiday 2011 Day 2 – Dubai Mall and Aquarium

Tuesday 21st May 2011 – Shopping at Dubai Mall

The second day of our holiday in Dubai and we decided that the first thing to do when in Dubai would be to shop. So we decided to head directly to Dubai Mall, one of many of Dubai’s massive super malls. We headed out into the heat but only for a few minutes before we were back in air conditioned heaven within one of Dubai’s many shiny new metro stations.

They are all built like lobbies of 5 star hotels with marble looking surfaces left right and centre, and at union Square, where we were boarding our train there was even a Time Capsule containing a message to the future from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum himself. The metro is easy to navigate in Dubai, there is only a single line that runs east to west across the entire city and is imaginatively called the red line, although a second line that runs mostly through Deira north to south is currently under construction but has already been equally wonderfully named as the green line.

Once you have gone under the Creek the metro comes over ground and you follow alongside the route of Sheikh Zayed Road through the financial district of Dubai with its many new sky scrapers. It’s quite an experience riding the totally driverless automated metro trains, they are quite fast and smooth and since most of the track is raised high above the ground like a monorail you get great views as well and the every time we used them they were never crowded.

After a short trip we arrived at our destination, Dubai Mall metro station, which is actually not connected to the mall but just a short distance away. There is a connecting bus which you can ride for free if you hold onto your metro ticket, which uses a contactless card system similar to that used in London. It is here that we got our first view of the world’s tallest building the Burj Al Khalifa. Exiting the metro station it is the first thing you notice as it just dominates the skyline at 828m high and glistens in the desert sun. We stopped, as did pretty much everyone else, to take a picture or two before getting on the bus to the mall.

Once in Dubai Mall it is similar to any large shopping mall you have ever been in before, but like everything in Dubai it’s bigger. Comparing it to what I know best, the Bullring shopping centre in Birmingham, they are very similar internally with many similar shops, but the Bullring, according to Wikipedia has a retail space of 125,000sq meters and Dubai Mall, well that has a total of 3,770,000sq meters, plus Dubai Mall has a massive ice rink and also one of the world’s largest aquariums right in the centre and then there is Sega Republic a huge indoor theme park and a 22 screen megaplex cinema and at least two massive food courts with hundreds of choices from around the world. So maybe after thinking about it not quite that much of an easy comparison with the Bullring after all.

We spent some time looking around and exploring the mall, it’s quite easy to get lost in there simply because of the size of the place, but a long walk later we had found the food court and decided to take a break from our exploration and stop for lunch. The exploration hadn’t ended though as we entered the food court just like everywhere else the place was massive, it was probably about 20mins to walk around the whole court taking in the selection of world food choices, including places such as western brands like Taco Bell, McDonalds and Pizza Hut, but we finally picked our choices and took a break.

We continued our hike around the mall, finding along the way the indoor ice rink and water fall before we discovered the malls centre piece, the Aquarium. It was two floors high with apparently the world record for the largest acrylic panel at 38m x 9m. It’s very impressive and the range of aquatic creatures on display was numerous, there were hundreds of fish, and at least a dozen different sharks and stingrays.

The aquarium included an underwater tunnel which we decided to pay to explore, and it was worth it because once you go inside you get an amazing view from inside and actually get to see a lot more of the larger sharks which were hiding in the shadows of some of the larger rock formations within the tank, there were even a couple taking a sneaky rest on the roof of the glass tunnel.

The admission to the aquarium also includes admission to the zoo which is a few floors above after you exit the aquarium. Here there are a lot more aquatic wildlife to view, including turtles, beavers, friendly penguins and some very interesting looking crabs.  There was even a tank full of all the varieties of fish from the film Finding Nemo to keep the kids happy, these though as with all Hollywood celebrities were difficult to photograph as they wouldn’t bloody stay still so all I have on film are orange and blue blurs.

There were a few other interesting and slower fish to take pictures of though including a display of live fish eggs, all lined up in order of age, the clever thing being that the type of eggs on display were transparent so you could see the embryo in each stage of its development, very fascinating indeed, although slightly worrying when you think they are on public display but Dubai Mall claims to follow International Standards of Ethics and Animal Welfare Policy so I do hope that these baby celebrity fish are well cared for.

Once out of the Aquarium there was chance to browse a few more shops, and then it was time to head outside to catch the live dancing fountain performance. This is outside on a manmade lake at the base of the Burj Khalifa. When you exit the mall out towards the fountain the view that greets is spectacular with the Burj Khalifa towering over the area and the massive manmade lake stretching out before you like an endless hotel swimming pool.

Across the lake over a nice little bridge is a small shopping area with some souq type markets, here we were able to get some souvenirs and a professional photograph of the both of us taken in front of the lake with the Burj Khalifa in the background, which was nice to have since my camera had struggled to get a quality night time picture of the scene. That was possibly due to the amount of water that may have gotten into the lens after taking a video of the dancing fountain, not sure my camera is water proof in anyway, but it did survive, although took a while to clear the lens of water droplets to be able to take some clear photos again. However the dancing fountain was delightful, designed by the same people who did the fountain outside the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas, every half an hour after dark you can see a 10 minute performance of the fountains dancing across the lake to a musical background.

By the time we had finished watching the fountain and looking around it was 10pm and the mall was closing so we found our way back to the shuttle bus stop and got the bus back to the metro stop. However this is when we discovered that the 2 min trip from the metro to the mall this morning was not the same route back, the bus goes on a loop around the down town Dubai area and another 20mins later we reached the metro stop. By this time however we had missed the last metro back to Diera as the last train each evening is about 11pm. So this meant our first chance to try out a local taxi

The officially licenced taxis are easy to spot, all cream with different coloured roofs denoting the different taxi company, although they are all identical and charge the same standard rate. 10 dirham (£1.60) is the starting rate and will get you a reasonable distance, I don’t remember paying more than 30 dirham for a taxi and we covered some long distances in our time there. So we got the taxi back to our hotel, the drivers pretty much all speak English, although when I asked to go to the Radission Blu there was some confusion over which one as there was apparently at least two but after some slightly misunderstood discussion we were reasonably confident the driver knew where we wanted to go.

It’s at this point that I really felt the loss of the use of my smartphone. I had removed the sim card on landing in Dubai to prevent any chance of any data use that could rack up a huge bill on my return. But it was right now that I wanted to whip out Google Maps and track our progress via GPS just to reassure myself we were at heading the right way. Dubai isn’t a complicated place though, you can basically go west to the financial districts and east toward the creek and Diera. It’s difficult to tell if you’re heading in the right direction based on the scenery as it is basically all identical skyscrapers, dessert and motorways wherever you look but I soon spotted a sign for Diera and the bridge over the creek and was more reassured we were heading in the right direction and it wasn’t long before we were back at our hotel. We left the driver a nice tip as a personal thank you for not taking us to the wrong hotel and that was then the end of our second day in Dubai.

Holiday 2011 Day 1 – Welcome to Dubai

Monday 30th May 2011 – First Day in Dubai

This is the start of my day by day blog recounting the events of my recent 4-week holiday to China including a stopover in Dubai. I mainly want to write down my experience for my future reference but thought however boring it may be nice to share my point of view as well, hence this blog.

I plan to write a blog post per day of my vacation, although they won’t appear on here on a daily basis as I’m often busy or just too lazy for that sort of commitment.

And so we begin. Our flight from Birmingham left on the evening of the 29^th of May and we arrived in Dubai 7 hours later in the early hours of Monday 30^th May local time. The flight was comfortable but the inflight entertainment system was broken so it was a very boring flight, attempting to get some sleep was unsuccessful as sleeping on a plane is not really something I have got the hang of, although it was no problem for Cecilia as she pretty much slept the entire flight.

Arriving in Dubai is an experience in itself. The view from the plane was spectacular, mostly sea as you approach but circling the airport you get a view of the endless desert and then in the distance some idea of the scale of the modern development of the city with skyscrapers and endless apartments coming into view. Once you land and taxi past the massive Emirates terminal at Dubai airport it impresses again with its scale and stunning design. Inside it is equally impressive, on arrive when you walk into the immigration control and baggage collection the scale of the place is beyond belief. The only thing I could think of to compare the scale to was thinking back to the Lord of the Rings and the scene in the film where Gandalf confronts the Balrog in the Mines of Moria with the massive high roof and the endless columns. I was impressed and had not even left the airport.

We had booked an airport transfer to our hotel so once we left arrivals there was a guy waiting for us. Now I was expecting a taxi or small mini bus as we have had previously on holidays when we have used the airport transfer service. However in this case we were ferried to the hotel in a brand new executive Lexus, nice extra gold star for our hotel on that one.  Our hotel was a very short ride from the airport into Deira City Centre, which is the eastern side of the Creek.

Our hotel was the Radisson Blu Deira Creek, a stunning hotel with helpful staff and quality rooms, all with a brilliant view over the Creek. Our room was nice, was a bit surprised when we entered the room and the TV came on and the default channel was the Hotels own channel showing all their hotels around the world and on the screen was the Radisson Blu from Birmingham made me feel so much at home.

Another nice feature in the room, along with the comfy bed and nice views was sitting on the bed next to the hotel information and restaurant guide book, it was of course the pillow menu, which included 4 different types of pillow you could order if you didn’t like the ones provided, we however quite liked the big comfy pillows they had provided so had no need to order for this additional menu.

After breakfast at the hotel we decided to go out and have a look around. This was when we really got to a chance to face the heat head on. The week we were in Dubai the average temp was around 40 degrees Centigrade and walking out of the nice air con environment of the hotel the heat is like a brick wall hitting you as you step out the door. It takes some getting used to and even then spending more than 10 mins outside at a time is hard going, but you get used to it and it is just about bearable if you try not to think about it too much and drink plenty of water.

Since we only just arrived that morning we decided not to do anything much on the first day apart from exploring the area around the hotel. This included finding the local metro station, which was a five minute walk from the hotel and would be our main route to the big attractions later in the week across the western side of the Creek.

Our next stop was to take a trip across the Creek in a water taxi, of which there are two types, the first is the government transport network water bus, which is a modern water taxi with air con, with the other choice being the local Abra, these are also water taxis but are small traditional wooden boats and are defiantly the way to go as they are used by all the locals and only cost 1 dirham which translates to 0.20p per trip and are just much more fun to ride.

We took an Abra across the Creek from Al Sabkha to Dubai Old Souq. The old souq is where the fabric and spice souqs are, and also the Dubai Museum is just round the corner from here, which we would be back to visit later in the week. For the moment we had a browse around the souq but didn’t stay too long, it’s nice to see a traditional market like this but it gets boring really quickly after the 100^th seller tried to sell us something we didn’t need or corral us into their shop.

One we did look in was a fabric shop and Cecilia was actually interested in some table cloths and cushions but couldn’t find the combination of colour and pattern she wanted, but the shop assistant didn’t let up. We were offered a table cloth for 250 dirham originally but as we left the shop they followed us and the price kept dropping and as we disappeared into the distance the last price that was shouted after us was 20 dirham, quite an impressive discount but we still decided to pass. It was quite a fun experience but we decided to head back to the Creek and get another Abra back to our hotel to plan the rest of the week.

 

And that was the end of the first day of our holiday, only about another 25 to go. All the places we visited during our holiday will be blogged about but I also plan to add locations to this Google Map, which will be nice to se once completed as I update these blogs.

Holiday Points of Interest – Google Map

London Visit June 2007

While my parents in law are visiting we decided to take a trip down to London. I have been before as I even worked there for a year so it wasn’t new to me but we took the chance to do all the tourist things you do when you goto London.

We started with the British Museum. I have been there already, about 3 years ago. Its well worth going if your ever in London, for one its free, also its huge! They have a bit of everything for the complete History of the world, the Museum is split into sections based on location, so there is an Asia room, Europe, Roman and Egypt, etc…

They have some impressive stuff, including an entire Roman building and a room full or slightly scary mummies, with accompanying x-rays to prove there are some disturbing things inside them.

We then went along to have a look at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Then on our way up to Trafalgar Square we noticed something interesting. At Horse Guards Parade they were, well, parading. There were a few police keeping the small crowd back from watching the guards and horses too close. But what happened next was the most interesting as a line of police bikes came barreling down the road, blocked off the traffic and a minute later the Queens car came down the road and into Horse Guards Parade. It was neat, we managed to get a really close up picture of the Queen. Not many people get that close, and all by chance, great. Check out my Flickr picture album to see the picture we took.

Once again, while in London, we took the chance to ride on the London Eye. It worth it for the great views and the London Eye itself is an amazing structure. It takes 30 minutes to get all the way around it. The weather was nicer on this day too so we could see much clearer, all the way to Wembley actually.

We finished the trip with a guided tour of the Tower of London. We got the chance to see the crown jewels and look around the tower. To be clear its not just a tower but an entire castle including a moat and complete surrounding outer defense wall. Also it was not apparently a prison but used as a royal castle. It was a great tour, the the guide was a real Yeoman Warder, nicknamed the ‘Beefeaters’ they are the Royal Guard.  The one giving the tour was quite entertaining, real fun and made the whole of the history of the Towers really enjoyable and he told some wild tales. If you ever go there make sure you wait around and go on one of the Yeoman guided tours, there are usually a couple going on each day.

Well thats it, London was a blast. Almost forgot to mention we got a good look at Tower Bridge and went down Oxford Street. A recommend a trip to London to anyone who has never been, Visit London.

Cebit 2007 – Hannover, Germany

Spent the last few days in Germany, Thursday to Sunday, attending the CeBIT electronic trade show. I managed to find a free wireless hotspot and post a blog entry while I was there but I thought I would write a full account of my trip here now.

Traveled to Berlin from East Midlands Airport on Thursday evening.My first time on a budget airline and I have to say it wasn’t that bad, I got a seat and the plane didn’t fall apart so that was all good, but I haven’t been on many planes so can’t really compare it to anything better.

Our Hotel was a 1 and a half hours from Berlin and a further 1 and a half hours to Hannover, which meant a lot of driving, but since I wasn’t the one doing the driving that didn’t bother me.

CeBIT was great, it was massive for a start. We had a look around hundreads of stands for a multitude of different companies. We managed to talk to a lot of companies in a mobile sector and get a few good contacts. I did my best to promote http://www.GooSync.com as much as I could and managed to hand out a good number of business cards while I was there.

Of general interest there was some good stuff about Augmented Reality systems in the future technology hall.
(How Augmented Reality Works) There was a face recognition system that would pick out a face from a video image and display on screen that persons mood. There was also a system that displayed a 3D bird on a live video feed that you could interact with. A Camera was set up facing a blank space of floor, a screen showed the live video of this blank floor, the augmented reality 3D bird was then shown standing on the floor on the screen. If you placed a blank piece of paper in front of the camera on the screen the bird would jump up onto the paper. It looked great.

I got a few pictures of the event and so did some of the guys I went with, I will upload them to Flickr when I get a chance. On the last day we traveled back to Berlin and stopped by the Autostadt in Wolfsburg (Autostadt) which is a visitors museum and visitor centre for the VW factory. It was amazing, it has a regular museum full of old cars and then each of the comapnies in the VW group, Audi, Skoda, Lamborghini, Bentley and VW all had their own building with different attractions in them like the Light and Laser show for Lamborghini and the 360 degree cinema for VW. If you ever go to Germany I recommend you stop in at the AutoStadt you’ll have a great day.

We traveled back home on Sunday night, I got back to my flat about 1am. But I’m back at work now and chasing up some of the leads we got while at the show. Maybe I’ll get to go again next year, it would be nice.

New SkyScrapers and Trams for Birmingham, UK

Work has started on two new sky scrapers next to Snow Hill Train/Tram station in Birmingham city centre. This work also includes a new side entrance to the station opposite the Police station. The work will then link into the expansion of the tram to run through Birmingham city centre past New Street Station all the way down Broad Street to Five Ways.

Its an exciting development and I pass it every day on my way to work. Its just a pile of mud and some Concrete stairs at the moment but can’t wait to see it when its finished.

This picture shows the four planned buildings at the bottom of the image. The two squares will be office blocks, the other two rounder plots will be the two sky scrapers, one hotel, one residential.

In the top left is St Pauls cathedral, which will get a new gardened area infront of it making it a really nice pedestrian area. At the moment the giant roundabout that is there isn’t great. As you can see above the roundabout is going and the roads will be redesigned, much neater and more pedestrian spaces.

This is a neat model showing the buildings in front of Snow Hill station. They look fantastic.

Check out this picture for a look at what they will really look like. I will really enjoy watching these being built and think Birmingham city centre will look amazing when its done.

The extension to the tram line will also start development soon. Not sure when but the building of these sky scrapers will more than likely take into account the tram extension.

I think if you look at the top image the white extension to the bridge is where the new tram line will run, between the sky scrapers and the station and behind the office blocks, then I think it will join the road near the front of the station.

The route plan from there means the trams will run down Corporation street, then upto Victoria Square and down Broad street to Five Ways.

Below is a picture of the new trams the extension will use, they look pretty nice. Won’t be riding on them till at least 2010 though so hope i’m still around here then to catch a ride.