The minaret chants woke us up, calling many to prayer and having us recall we were far from home We started our day a skip away from our hotel, with breakfast at an art hotel in the historic old Dubai. In a peaceful courtyard with refreshing mint lemonade, we contemplated ditching our mall plans for our Kindles and countless lemonades. But as our time to explore was limited, we pressed on.

Thanks to a speedy, clean metro with Chihuly-like chandeliers, we arrived at the Dubai mall readily. The metro offered to drop us at over 5 different malls in its main line, but as this mall was near the Burj Kalifa skyscraper, the fountains and had the indoor aquarium, it seemed like the “must see.” Turns out as suspected, we aren’t mall peeps. We had no room in our backpacks for the offerings from Dior kids, Kate Spade, the Cheesecake Factory, and the infinite designer stores at our disposal. At a glance, the children’s play space was doing the best business. That is until you went outside where fellow tourists engaged in all sorts of yoga to capture their companions and the whole Burj skyscraper. No selfie stick was long enough for this challenge! From here we forged forward with must sees, making the decision to head over to Palm Jumeirah, the man made island which indeed looks like a palm
tree from the sky. From our monorail view, it looked like more construction in this Vegas/Disney land. So we did what one would expect – got Starbucks, Wi-Fi, and briefly chilled until the next monorail back.

Back at old Dubai and our hotel, we realized we are more suited for Kindles and lemonades than Karl Lagerfeld and cheesecake.