Dubai

Hello!

So I thought it was time to restart my blog again - I'm just going to do a few catch up posts from Dubai and the cruise on the Costa Atlantica from last week, before getting up to date again with my travels here in Thailand.

We spent a couple of days in Dubai before the cruise and as part of a week long cruise you also dock in  Dubai for a night on either end of the week. Dubai was definitely the most exciting of the places we visited by far (although more about that will be written later!).

Atlantis

Our first full day in Dubai we spent at the Atlantis resort on the Palm. I have always wanted to visit here, and you can buy day passes to the water park, Aquaventure, for a reasonable price. We spent the day at the great waterpark and also visited The Lost Chambers, which was an amazing aquarium which had great theming! The Leap of Faith ride (which goes through a fish tank) was amazing!

Jumeirah Beach Park

The next day I met up with Laura and her boyfriend Mik, whose ship we would be going on for the next week! We visited the beach park, which you pay a small admission for but in return has better facilities such as changing than a public beach would have. You were also able to get great views of the Burj Al Arab from here!

Dubai Mall

Dubai has plenty of huge shopping malls, but the Dubai Mall is by far the biggest. We also visited Mall of the Emirates, which has an indoor ski slope which looked amazing! The Dubai Mall has over 1000 shops, so it is very hard to navigate, but it is the site of the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa. On our final night in Dubai we got tickets to go up the Burj Khalifa to the 124th floor and the views were amazing! Every evening they do a water fountain show and it was nice to see this from the top! The mall itself was pretty impressive, with a good mix of US and UK brands, although with my limited luggage space I had to resist shopping!

Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo

Inside the Dubai Mall is a huge aquarium, which forms a focal point for the mall, however for an admission fee you can go through the huge tunnel and also visit the Underwater Zoo located on the 2nd Floor. Although the tunnel was good, the Underwater Zoo was really enjoyable to visit with a great variety of fish and penguins (I am quite into Aquariums at the moment!).

Wild Wadi Water Park

On our final day in Dubai a few of us visited the Wild Wadi Water Park, which fortunately had just reopened on that day after being closed for January! It is a large water park located near the beach front and Burj Al Arab (which you got amazing views of from some of the rides! It has a great selection of rides, including a lot of ones which go uphill which is quite unusual! The biggest ride in the park starts in a sort of chamber and then it opens and drops you into the slide, which was scary but fun! There were also some amazing 4 person rides which we really enjoyed doing!

Will update again soon about the cruise and ports of call! :)