dubai Archives - SandSpice

25
Mar 25
4

A Short Dubai Stopover 🛩️🐪

If you’re passing through Dubai and think it’s just a city of shiny skyscrapers and endless shopping malls, congratulations—you’ve scratched about 2% of the surface.

A short stopover here offers a whirlwind introduction to a city where you can snowboard indoors, ride a camel outdoors, and have afternoon tea at the world’s tallest building, all while questioning your life choices.

Buckle up for a UAE layover that’s more action-packed than most vacations.

Highlights

Why Take a Break in Dubai?

Since most Emirates South-East Asian flights involve a transit in Dubai en route, a stopover in the city seems to be a great addition to your vacation. In fact, for many travellers this is often where the holiday begins (or ends).

For us, this came at the end of our trip to the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Our Emirates return flight had a change in Dubai, so we decided to treat this as a stopover and spend a couple of days there.

Dubai Layover Visa Requirements

Note that although most nationalities are allowed to pass through Dubai in transit, some nationalities (Russians for example) require a visa to leave the airport and visit Dubai. However, this can easily be arranged online by purchasing a UAE visa online.

The cost for this service when we applied was $63 per person, although this may have changed in the meantime.

If you fly with Emirates and your flight necessitates a Dubai stopover in excess of 6 or 8 hours, then like Turkish Airlines, Emirates will provide free transfers and hotel accommodation for 1 night.

However, there really has to be no other flight options available to you for this offer to be valid. In our case, we paid a small supplement to break our journey in Dubai, and searched for our own accommodation.

Wescott Plaza Hotel Apartments, Bur Dubai

We chose an apartment hotel in Bur Dubai, close to the center, and paid €78 for a 2-person apartment for 2 nights. We also arranged an airport pick-up (Dhs 60) and drop-off (Dhs 40) from the same hotel.

The place we chose was The Wescott Plaza Hotel Apartments.

They provided us with a spacious, clean and well-equipped apartment. We had a comfortable living room with TV, and a separate bedroom and kitchen. The apartments are cleaned every day, and the towels changed unless you request otherwise.

The hotel has a large reception area on the ground floor that is staffed 24/7, and is always available for help. Not far from the hotel there is a metro stop for easy access to the city. Beyond the metro stop there is a wide boulevard with plenty of shops, supermarkets and even a few restaurants.

Although we didn’t have the time to try them, the Wescott offers complimentary use of a gym, sauna and swimming pool. They also offer a free shuttle service to and from the Dubai Mall, running 2 or 3 times a day.

All Hotel Options in Dubai

What to do with just a 3-day Dubai stopover

So, you’ve got just 72 hours in Dubai and think you can tackle it all? Good luck!

Between the gold-slinging souks, towering architectural feats that scream “Look at me!” and malls that are basically cities with air-conditioning, your itinerary is going to be more packed than your suitcase.

From indoor skiing in the desert (because why not?) to soaking in the views from a building that scrapes the heavens, Dubai’s got enough over-the-top attractions to make your layover feel like a whirlwind audition for “The Most Luxurious Life You’ll Never Afford.”

Let’s dive in.

Take a Desert Safari

The activity that was a “must-do” for us was the evening Desert Safari. Since we had 2 nights in Dubai, we booked this for the 2nd evening.

There are a number of different companies that offer this activity, all with variable TripAdvisor reviews. After a lot of research, we chose Desert Safari Dubai. Having read the bad reviews as well as the good we decided to just take it as it comes, and do our best to enjoy whatever they had to offer.

As it turned out, we had absolutely nothing to worry about (see Dubai Desert Safari).

An evening in the desert is not to be missed

We booked our Desert Safari online several weeks in advance to ensure we’d have a place. There was no payment upfront, simply an exchange of details by email. Payment is made by cash or credit card when your guide picks you up from your hotel.

You can book Desert Safari Dubai from here.

Shop Till You Drop at the Mall

Of course, we were understandably keen to check out the biggest and best shopping experience on the planet. The Dubai Mall is the world’s largest shopping mall based on total floor area.

The mall also includes a Gi-normous fish tank: The 10-million liter Dubai Aquarium tank, located on the ground level of the Dubai mall, is the largest suspended aquarium in the world.

It houses thousands of aquatic animals, comprising over 140 species. More than 300 sharks and rays live in this tank, including the largest collection of Sand Tiger sharks in the world. There are numerous ways you can experience the main Aquarium tank, which measures 51 meters in length and 11 meters in depth. One of these is to hire some scuba gear and take a swim with the fish.

Burj Khalifa Fountain during the day

Burj Khalifa Lake & Tower

We also had to check out the daily aquatic fountain & light show. Set on the 30-acre Burj Khalifa Lake, the fountain shoots water jets as high as 500 ft (150 meters), equivalent to that of a 50-storey building. The fountain is 900 ft (275 meters) long and has five circles of varying sizes and two central arcs.

The beam of light shining upward from the fountain can be seen from over 20 miles away, and is visible from space making it the brightest spot in the Middle East, and quite possibly in the entire world.

Speaking of the largest things in the world, Dubai also boasts the highest man-made structure. Standing at 829.8 m is the iconic Burj Khalifa. The tip of the spire can be seen from 95 kilometers away.

Burj Khalifa: It’s……. big

So we also arranged an appointment to travel up to the top of the world (well, the top of the tallest man-made structure in the world).

For more details on this, check out Burj Khalifa.

If you enjoyed Dubai Stopover, check out our Short Breaks & City Stops. You may also like:

Plan Your Travel - Dubai Desert Safari — Dune Bashing Brilliance
Our last day in the UAE, and the Dubai Desert Safari turns out to be great fun with Dune Bashing & an Arab campsite out in the desert sunset

Dubai Mall - Best retreat for Apocalypse...
If ever there was a world catastrophe, with all its outlets and entertainment venues the Dubai Mall is the place I'd want to be holed up in.

Spice up your inbox…

… with discounted hotel deals, cost-saving travel itineraries and SandSpice escapades! 😉

31
Oct 23
0

Burj Khalifa Tallest Building in the World – Dubai Stopover

Tags : dubai

How can you visit Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and not experience the ear-popping heights of Burj Khalifa Dubai – the tallest building in the world?

We’re all used to the high-rise skyscrapers of Shang Hai, Hong Kong and NYC, but the Burj Khalifa exudes a slim eloquence, modernity and quality that surpasses them all. The tower comprises 160 storeys rising to 828 meters (2,716.5 feet).

For it’s height, Burj Khalifa is also a very narrow structure, becoming ever more narrow as it rises. Naturally, there is a limit on the number of people who can access the upper levels at any given time.

Booking Your Visit

Before we arrived in Dubai (at the end of our trip around Sri Lanka), we read that it is advisable to pre-book a visit to Burj Khalifa. There are nine 1-hour visits to the top per day, and the time-slots can be quickly filled up – especially the popular 5 pm sunset slot. Pre-booking is even more essential if you’ll be in Dubai for a just few days in a busy holiday period.

You can make an online booking at http://www.burjkhalifa.ae/en/

Currently, ticket prices to visit level 125 start from 141 AED (€33). A visit to the top level (level 148) will cost you a whopping 370 AED (€89).

We booked the 5 pm slot, which fitted in nicely with a trip to the Dubai Mall (where the tower is located). This allowed us to do some shopping beforehand, and then get a meal at one of the many eateries afterwards.

Looking down at the fountains from the top of Burj Khalifa

If you already have your tickets when you arrive, you need to check in around 15 minutes before your time slot. Otherwise, there is a risk your place may be sold off to somebody else arriving on the off-chance.

There is a pleasant reception area where you can wander around before being admitted to the 65 meter-long travelator. The travelator takes you on a trip through time from the earliest days of Dubai to the present. This is like an animated history of the building of the tower.

Somewhere during our wander, we were photographed against a blue screen. This is all very VIP red-carpet, but we didn’t find out what it was all about until near the end of our visit (see below).

Burj Khalifa Dubai – Going Up…

At the end of the travelator, you begin your vertical ascent to the observation deck via a high-speed elevator, travelling at 10 meters per second. As the doors open, floor-to-ceiling glass walls provide a breath-taking unobstructed 360-degree view of the city, desert and ocean.

The ascent will make your ears pop, so remember to swallow frequently. We ascended 125 floors in 40 seconds.

Burj Khalifa Dubai – The Observation Lounge

360 Degree Views at the Top

At the top, we were free to wander around the enclosed observation lounge, and take pictures. The At the Top Burj Khalifa tour typically lasts 1.5 hours. However, you can linger as long as you like before making the return journey to the base of Burj Khalifa.

You’ll be taking with you a fuller appreciation of this architectural wonder and a deeper understanding of Dubai’s remarkable vision.

You can shop At the Top and take home a souvenir of your visit.

Burj Khalifa Dubai – View from the top

From the observation lounge, it’s clear to see that there is still a good way further up the tower to go before the very top.

Unfortunately, you won’t get the chance to experience the apogee of the tower. That is, not unless you happen to be Tom Cruise, who famously had himself filmed sitting on the very apex of the tower.

This incident took place during the filming of Mission Impossible 4, which used Burj Khalifa as a backdrop for various computer-enhanced shenanigans.

Burj Khalifa Dubai – Looking even further up…

After descending back to ground level, you are subjected to some high-pressure marketing as a multitude of pretty young girls try to sell you personalized photographs of your visit to the tower. The photographs they took earlier have now been developed, featuring you posing in front of a magnificent tower backdrop.

Save yourself some money, politely refuse, and take your own photographs if you really want to impress the folks back home.

Burj Khalifa Dubai – Shadow of the Tower

All your hotel options in Dubai

If you enjoyed Burj Khalifa Dubai, check out our other Short Breaks & City Stops. You may also like:

←Older posts

Stay Moisturized!

La Roche-Posay Double Repair Face Moisturizer

Tag Archives: dubai

Mar 25

4