Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Arabian Delights

With the weather far more pleasant in Dubai than on our previous visits, we decided to head off to the coast to check out the coastline and especially the Palm Jumeirah.

From our hotel, we caught the metro down to Palm Deira to see the beachfront from a vantage point in the Hyatt Hotel. It was somewhat disappointing so we caught the metro all the way down to the mall at Ibn Battuta. This was named after a famous traveller from over 1000 years ago and the areas of the mall reflect the places he visited. We found some great shops we may revisit at the end of our holiday.

Our next stop was Palm Jumeirah. We travelled there by metro and taxi and managed to talk our way in to the Hotel Atlantis. It is strictly for the well heeled guests. It is simply fantastic. Palm Jumeirah is a man made island in the shape of a palm tree that extends out from the coast into the Arabian Sea. The Atlantis Hotel is its crowning glory and is simply spectacular with incredible pools, a private beach and its own aquarium. We were able to walk through the hotel to the adjacent adventure water park.  This is the size of a small city with every concievable water related feature.  It is the world's largest water park with fantastic rides and even dolphin interaction.

We returned to the metro via monorail with spectacular views over this unique development.  By the time we returned to the hotel, we were totally exhausted and we didn't even get wet!

 Gail in the Ibn. Battuta Mall. Just like being in the Alhambra
 Gail trying shoes!
 The spectacular waterpark.

Gail in the foyer of The Atlantis Hotel.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Worth a stopover just to go to that waterpark!
xoxo
Di

Kath said...

Yes, that waterpark makes Sydney's wet n wild look pretty tame!

Amanda said...

I think I need to go to that water park.