Dubai

I cannot believe how much money is being poured into Dubai. Those Arabian gulf countries have so much money! The first night we took a little water taxi on the river in Dubai and saw the older downtown area and skyscrapers and I thought those were big and nice, but then we went to the new downtown area which was insane. They have the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa, which is over 2,000 feet and like 160 stories. We ate dinner overlooking the building and the downtown area from the mall and the Burj Khalifa made the other huge 100+ story skyscrapers next to it look like lego buildings. It almost diminishes the skyline really. The whole area is really cool they have a huge mall with every designer store you can image and amazing fountains, an aquarium, and star atrium.  It was by far the coolest mall I have ever been to. Then you walk outside and their is a big lake that has fountains way better than the Bellagio that overlooks the whole downtown skyline. We sat and ate dinner and watched the fountains, it was a great night. The fountains are huge and cover a large area, are set to music, and have flames included.  It was really cool.

We also went and looked at the Palms and the Burj Al Arab which are the developments that they brought in sand for and made man-made peninsulas in ocean.  The Palm looks just like a Palm tree and each arm has different houses that each has access to water.  Then they did the same thing, but off the coast and in an outline of the world with sand. It is crazy. It makes me wonder if they are going to sink, especially the Burj Al Arab which is the big sail-like skyscraper.  We also went to this used car dealership in Dubai that has Aston Martins and Porsche's with less than 10,000 miles on them because their owners are so rich they only use them for a year. We also went to Ski Dubai, which is their indoor Ski slope. It was steeper than I thought, but still not comparable to a normal ski run.  The snow was pretty weird too, but I guess it works. Dubai was also really clean and well taken care of, one of the best big cities I have ever been to.