The fifty malls spread throughout Dubai are dominated by luxury brands, but also have large hypermarkets like Waitrose or Carrefour selling more day-to-day goods. The food courts are truly international, with the usual American chains joined by Iranian, Turkish, Asian, French and even English (in the form of The London Fish & Chip Company). Each mall is built bigger than the last, with some unique unexpected feature such as a penguin park, water park or in the case of the Mall of the Emirates a huge ski park where visitors rent cold weather gear and ski, board or Zorb their way down a decent sized snow slope at -4 whilst the weather outside reaches 40 or even 50°C at the height of summer.
As part of the $20bn Dubai Downtown development this mall building competition has culminated in the Dubai Mall. The world’s largest mall is home to 1200 stores, an ice rink, a 22 screen cinema, health clubs, multiple Michelin starred restaurants, the world’s largest fountains, one of the world’s largest aquariums and visitor access to the world’s tallest building.
The elevator waiting area has models and interesting touch screens which allow you to see how the Burj Khalifa would dominate a number of famous skylines. As you learn more about the building the superlatives continue:
- At over 200 storeys and 828m high it is the world’s tallest building, tallest occupied building and the tallest man-made structure, and 4 times the height of Canary Wharf, the tallest building in the UK.
- From the top it’s possible to see up to 95km.
- 12,000 workers and contractors of 80 nationalities worked on the project.
- The 57 elevators are among the fastest in the world at 10m/s
- The empty building weighs 500,000 tonnes
- Winds at the top have been recorded at 198km/h
- It’s covered by 28,601 glass panels.
The observation deck is on the 124th floor and the elevator whisks you up there in seconds. The deck itself is quite empty, but that’s not what you’re there for: the view outside is incredible. Virtual telescopes show live, clear, night and historic views, and an outside balcony allows you to take photos unobstructed by glass whilst wishing you’d bought your camera strap.
It’s worth noting that if you book in advance it costs 100AED, whilst just turning up will set you back 400AED: http://www.burjkhalifa.ae/
Here’s a video from the very top, a good distance above the observation platform:
