Getting lost in an undersea forest can be such a captivating and sublime experience. I’ve always had this thing for sea creatures and the random mystical concepts of their existence that play in my head—ideas of mermaids, the Loch Ness monster, and the like. Being in The Lost Chambers of the Atlantis made me experience just that.
The Ibn Battuta Mall is one of the most uniquely designed malls I’ve ever seen. Coming from an architecture background, it makes sense to me for a mall to maximize space by stacking it up to a couple of floors; however, this mall only stands with a singular floor with areas branching out into different kinds of “zones.” Because of its design, you can say that it’s highly accessible for all kinds of people (wheel chair friendly, easily walk-able, etc.).
Though, what stands out the most about this mall is its interior design. While its exterior is interesting in its own way with the massive circular hole that punches through the facade of the building, to me, its interior is what makes it even more of a gem of an architectural beauty. I’ll let the photos do the talking.
A trip Dubai will never be complete without experiencing an actual real desert (redundancy for emphasis!)! This was the day that we looked forward to the most, since it was whole day fixed on an immersive experience of the Desert Safari.
If you’re planning to book for the Desert Safari, I suggest you plan it a bit in advance so that you can find out when the drivers are available. For ours, we were actually supposed to go two days before, but had to reschedule due to the driver’s availability. We were lucky enough to make flexible adjustments, since our friends in Dubai already had contacts. But, if you’re coming in as independent tourists, I suggest you do your researching and planning in advance. The research will also help you land cheaper bookings.
It would be difficult for me to write about our day at the Mall of Emirates, since we were so wound up in our shopping, the word “shopping” would just literally be the main description for that day! (lol) I’m not too sure if you can count the Mall of Emirates as the counterpart of the Mall of Asia in the Philippines, but, to me, what mainly stands out about the Mall of Emirates is its gorgeous exterior design AND interior design, plus the fact that it has a space for indoor skiing (yup, you read right!) which is called Ski Dubai.
I cannot begin to imagine just how much spare land Dubai has in order to come up with such massive projects. Currently coming up with such feats in built projects, such as the Burj Khalifa, and the Burj Al Arab, it just seems that Dubai is such a huge clean slate with so much spaces and opportunities to conceive ideas and build on them. For today, we visited just one of those kinds of projects–a massive theme park called Global Village.
I realized after having spent time outside the hotel on the second night, I still had not fully recovered from my fever. So, for Day 2, I had to rest at the hotel again for the entire morning while my family went out to check out another souk/market. I felt a bit down that I had not been able to visit a souk throughout the first few days of the trip, but I knew it was more important to focus on my recovery.
It’s a first for me to be traveling out of the country during a special holiday. While Christmas is a day that I feel is a must to spend with the family, traveling out of the country during New Year’s felt more lenient.
Dubai has always been a country that fascinated me from the documentaries and powerpoint presentations that my professors would share with our class back in college days. It’s pretty much a given that it would be used as an example for great feats in architecture, such as the famous Burj Al Arab, known for its iconic sailboat silhouette and luxurious interiors, and the Burj Khalifa, currently the tallest skyscraper in the entire world. Being someone with an architecture background, it is without a doubt that being blessed with the opportunity to visit this country excited me to such great extents.