We met the other early arriving Thinkwellian for breakfast. We walked over to the hotel, which does not seem to be connected to our building, and tried the buffet. We walked around the property a bit, finding the pool, the ladies changing room (which is about four stories under the pool), the gym (similarly located), and several restaurants. We returned to our building to get directions to the mall across the street.
The Dubai Mall is just across the street from our apartment. The street in question, however, involves twenty lanes of traffic passing in front of our hotel. Eight of those lanes are raised, with five going in one direction and another three going the other direction. These twenty lanes intersect with another [at least] eleven lanes. The mall is on the other side of this intersection of thirty-some lanes. That's what I can see from my window. I'll count next time I walk over.
There is a pedestrian crosswalk, which mostly involves waiting for the lights to change and carefully crossing the street. There are a few sketchy places where you have to cross unmarked places and a couple spots where the "sidewalk" is a paved path barely wide enough for a single person and within arms reach of speeding cars.
The Dubai Mall, however, is the largest mall in the world. At least by total area, Wikipedia informs me that it is only the fourth largest by gross leaseable area, whatever that means. Suffice it to say that the place is enormous. In fact, by the time we left the mall around 3 p.m., we had walked 6.9 miles. And remember, this mall is just across the street.
Given the weather in Dubai (hot and hotter), I can understand the attraction of indoor, well, attractions. The Dubai Mall includes an aquarium, an ice skating rink, a lift to the viewing platform of the Burj Khalifa, and a remarkable THREE daycares. Why does a mall need three daycares? I suppose because it is the largest mall in the world. We still saw plenty of children in the mall.
The Dubai Mall also has one of the largest fountain shows in the world (possibly the largest). We weren't able to see the show during the afternoon because it only runs a couple times during the heat of the day and we didn't manage our time and location well enough to see it. Did I mention that the mall is enormous?
We walked around the mall for a couple hours, but I honestly think that we saw less than half of the place. We stopped in one of the two food courts for lunch. We used the app (this mall has an app! But moreover, it *needs* an app to find anything) to find one of the four Starbucks. The Starbucks had some very odd square doughnuts. We'd just eaten lunch, so we didn't try any of the food.
And like Starbucks everywhere, they couldn't figure out Craig's name. But they did draw a nice face for us... Do you suppose they knew that was my drink?
Then Craig and I split off to stop at LUSH for a few things I hadn't bothered to pack. And we went to the supermarket for a few things we thought we might not find at the supermarket on our side of the street.
After a quick stop at our apartment to drop things off, we headed to yet another mall. This time we were headed for a "local" mall on Jumeira Beach Road. My research suggested that Craft Land, located here, is the best one-stop-shopping store for sewing supplies in Dubai. After a discussion with my brother about the local power, I had decided to leave my sewing machine at home and purchase on locally for use here. This mall was only a five minute cab ride away, but I'm glad Craig was able to go with me.
We found the mall and quickly found the shop. This mall was normal sized, perhaps the size of Westridge in Topeka. But after the Dubai Mall, this place felt more like an indoor strip mall. We were able to find the store and I quickly settled on the cheapest machine for sale. We purchased the sewing machine and headed out to find a taxi.
There were tons of taxis driving down the street, but all of them had passengers. After ten minutes or so, Craig gave up and used Uber to call a car. This made me doubly glad that I hadn't gone by myself, because I don't have data on my phone and wouldn't have had this option. Not to mention lugging around a sewing machine!
After stopping at the apartment once again, we headed out to the nearby supermarket. There's a 24-hour supermarket just around the corner from our apartment, which we had been told offered free delivery. We made our selections from a well stocked store. One thing we noticed here is the proliferation of power adaptors. Finding them in the States can be a challenge, but many stores here carry a wide selection of power adaptors, including some types I've never seen before.
As we made our purchase, we told the cashier that we wanted delivery to our apartment. It soon became evident that the person who would have been a bagger in the U.S. was simply going to follow us home with the shopping cart. This was a little awkward because we were planning to stop next door at the pharmacy.
We did that while he walked on ahead with our groceries. We caught up with him a few buildings down. I'm not sure if he didn't know where he was going or if he didn't want us to think he'd stolen our groceries, but it was a bit odd. When we got to the apartment, he got a luggage cart and asked our suite number. He showed up a few minutes after we got to our apartment. We felt bad because he probably didn't expect to have to take a flight of stairs to deliver our groceries, so Craig tipped him even though this isn't a tipping country.
I unpacked while Craig worked on his work email. Then we walked back to the Dubai Mall with Kathryn to see the fountain show and get dinner. I didn't take pictures of dinner, because it was pretty normal. The most remarkable thing about the Dubai Mall is that, other than the sheer size, it really isn't that remarkable. The stores are the same ones you would see in malls in Los Angeles or London. It's just that this mall has all of them - ranging from Forever 21, to TopShop, to Gap, and including too many designers to name. Seriously, just take a look at the list here. It's the same thing with restaurants - Red Lobster, Texas Roadhouse, TGI Fridays, The Cheesecake Factory, P.F. Changs, Rainforest Cafe, Five Guys, the list goes on. (If you're really interested, you can see the restaurants here.) We ate at Social House, which isn't someplace we are familiar with, but the food was relatively ordinary.
When we got back to the hotel, we met the rest of the team from Los Angeles in the pub. They were just arriving from a sixteen hour flight, so we didn't stay long. We just stayed up late enough to avoid waking up early the next day.
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