10-26-2107 – This morning we woke up early to go check out a bit of the downtown area before our flight to Kathmandu. We ate breakfast at the hotel (Wayne was happy there were olives in the buffet line) and then called for an uber. So far, while in Dubai, everyone had been so nice. This driver was the exception. We wanted to go to see the Burj Al Arab which is a luxury hotel built on the Persian Gulf on a man made island. The shape of the structure is designed to resemble the sail of a ship…
Our uber driver was a jerk. He drove us all the way there (20 minutes) then told us when we got there that we couldn’t go on the grounds. We just wanted to snap a few pics of the structure and surrounding area. He told us that he could take us back bur that he would have to use the meter…he is also a taxi driver. He took the long way back, charged us a toll and dropped us off at the wrong location so we had to walk twice as far to get to the Burj Khalifa for our apt to go to the top. To top it off, he charged us twice on our credit card.
Going to the top of the Burj was pretty incredible. It is total of 165 floors but the viewing deck is at the 148th floor or 1,821 feet in the sky. It felt very strange to be so much higher than all of the other skyscrapers around and still being in a building.
The first tour we could get at was 9:30 a.m. which was later than we wanted since our flight we at 12:40 pm. It started with a serving of Arabian coffee and dates which is traditional Arabian hospitality. We moved on to a quick lesson on how it was built and the building specifications before heading to the super fast elevators which move at 32 feet a second. Once we got to the top we raced around getting video and pictures. Wish we could have spent more time but we had to then race to the airport. Timing was close but we successfully navigated customs and security in time so on to Kathmandu!!
