Dubai First Day 2 of 5

Much of Dubai is made up of reclaimed land and there are several hundreds of man-made islands which have been created by massive architectural engineering over the past decades. Dubai Mall is built beside a huge, beautiful crystal green-blue manmade lake and we left the coolness of the mall to be entertained by the lakes' fountain display which is always spectacular to see. We headed outside into the rising heat and stared up at the world's highest tower, Burj Khalifa. This tower with its' 163 floors has the world's highest restaurant on the 122nd floor. It was difficult to capture the tower by camera as it glistened in the hot Arabian sunlight. Last year we saw it later in the day and it was easy to photograph. Disappointingly we had just missed the fountain display and would need to wait another 45 minutes for the next show to begin and as it was SO hot outside and we had other things to see in Dubai, we decided to "miss the show" and planned to return later at night to see the coloured waterfall show instead.

We headed for the station along air-conditioned moving platform walkways for about 10 minutes- a much needed way of crossing this desert-hot city. Then we caught a train across town on the Red Metro line and on the way passed several other large malls, many high rise buildings, clusters of apartments, parklands and business districts. The trains are very frequent and a relaxing, cheap and convenient way to move around Dubai. We bought an all day train pass for about $8 and were able to use it as many times as we liked on both the trains and tram line. We had a great view out towards the coastline and saw many of the man-made island communities where the affluent families reside or rent for grand waterside holidays. The train we caught had a symbol of Palm Jumeirah on its wall because we were on the train that goes to this palm-island-shaped conglomerate of man-made islands which now house families, a water playground park, restaurants and expensive hotels.

We saw some very unusual building designs from the train vista. I have included a photo of an oval egg-design metal office building that we passed in the train.

We left the train at Jumeirah Lake Towers and transferred to a tram which took us to the Monorail Hub. The monorail cost $6 return and it took us from the mainland out across reclaimed water to the Palm Jumeirah Island Complex built out in the ocean.