Day 52 - Burj Khalifa

16.02.23

We clearly had to catch up on some sleep. We ended up sleeping between nine and ten hours. We wake up and leisurely make our way to breakfast. Again, a huge buffet awaits us with bread, muesli, fruits, pancakes, waffles, juices, etc, etc. We indulge ourselves in the day.

Until noon, we take our time to enjoy the still pleasant temperatures and the sun at the nearby beach. The sea is surprisingly cool and refreshing at the same time. Soon it is noon and we pack our backpack in the room for the afternoon. We take the metro for about 30 minutes to the Burj Khalifa (we will call it BK) - the tallest building in the world. On the way to the metro, we casually cross over 20 (!) lanes with the pedestrian bridge. The highway alone is 7 lanes wide in each direction.

The journey goes by quickly and soon we arrive at the stop. The entrance to visit the tower is located in the Dubai Mall. Shopping center x 100 in comparison to our centers. Despite a direct tunnel and conveyor belts, it takes us about 15 minutes to get from the station to the mall. Afterwards, we try to orient ourselves on a smart information board to find the entrance to 'at the top'. It works more or less and we treat ourselves to an afternoon cappuccino at the Italian Cafe Nero - a medium becomes a large when we pick it up. Now it is time for the Burj Khalifa (a total of 828m high and currently the tallest building in the world). We actually need the 15 minutes until our time slot to find the entrance or get there. Thanks to Sarah's online booking yesterday, we have QR codes and can walk through seamlessly. We just have to wait a bit in front of the elevator. Then we get in and ride the 125 floors to a height of 456m in 60 seconds (speed 8m/s). It's fast.

Once we reach the top, we have a really great 360 degree view of parts of the city. Meanwhile, it has grown so much that you can't see everything anymore. We walk around the tower and take photos. We are not alone up there, so we are soon drawn back down. We have to wait a bit longer here, but in the end it is faster than expected. When we are back down, we head to the Dubai Fountain. We take a walk around it and catch different views of the tower and the developing city around it. Before the construction of the BK (started in April 2004 / opened in January 2010), it was actually just a sandy desert landscape - now it's a skyscraper and luxury jungle.

At 5pm, we decide to slowly make our way back to the hotel, i.e. a 15-minute walk to the station, a 30-minute metro ride, and another 15 minutes to the hotel. Therefore, we are back an hour later and spot the sunset at 6:10pm in the room. Afterwards, we look forward to dinner with the theme 'International'. There really is everything from Asian to American to Italian, Mexican, Indian, etc.

At the end of the day, we watch a 45-minute documentary about the BK on our tablet. Well, Marco falls asleep after only half of it. Sarah manages three quarters. Then it's fini for today. Tallest tower: Check.