His View 

United Arab Emirates - Feliks' perspective

 

Dubai

I have a friend from college that has visited Dubai on many occasions and she described it as if “someone played Sim City in real life.” This was the best description. I was looking out the window as we flew over the city. I could clearly see the Palm Jumeirah islands and the Burj Khalifa. The rest was covered by a good bit of fog or dust, I couldn't tell which. I was really excited to see the airport as this is usually the foreshadow to the rest of the city. I was disappointed; there was not thing special about it so my excitement dropped a little. 

 

Since this was an unexpected stop, a layover on the way to India, we only had one day to see everything. Public transportation was going to be important because the city is so big. We made our way to the metro station and found an unlimited ride card for about $6 each. We decided to ride all the way through the city and make our way back. As the metro started toward the downtown area, skyscrapers started popping up left and right. All the buildings were so unique. There would be two or three, sometime four, very large buildings with the same style but all had small differences. As we kept going, the skyscrapers started getting bigger and as we approached the downtown area, they got even bigger and fancier. 

 

We started our journey at the Palm Jumeirah beach. It was actually pretty crowed since the sun was out in full force. The water was chilly but felt great with the heat. After kicking ourselves for leaving our swim gear in the checked bag we found a nice little spot in the grass and relaxed. I fell asleep and Caywood got a small burn on her nose. 

 

Our next stop was the Burj Al Arab, the hotel that looks like a sail. Again, Dubai is massive and we were tired so we took the public transportation to get us closer. We couldn't get too close to the building due to a security gate and some construction but we managed some good pictures. There were tons of people taking selfies and group photos. A short bus ride back and we were on our way to Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa. 

 

There were so many people, so many. The mall was huge. Massive. Bigger than the Mall of America I think. They had an ice skating rink, aquarium, so many stores, and the Burj Khalifa was pretty much on top of it. Our plan was to go to the top but unfortunately they were sold out for that day. It was a bummer. But we did get to see the fountain show that I think could have been better than the Bellagio’s in Vegas. It was pretty short but definitely memorable.

 

As we started to leave the mall and headed down the catwalk to the metro, we came up on traffic. There were so many people, so many, that they had the army controlling the traffic flow. People started getting upset and just rushed the line and the army guys didn't really have anything they could do. 

 

Overall, Dubai is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It is like Sim City in real life. The suburbs have buildings that would rival major US city downtowns. It never stopped. I feel like there was a competition going on, not who could build the tallest or biggest skyscraper, but who could build the most unique one. The beach was awesome, the public transportation was awesome, and the mall is an experience of its own. There were public bathrooms in all the metro station if you had a valid ticket. WiFi was a little tricky to find but the mall had good service in most places.