For Thanksgiving, my family and I decided to go on vacation to Dubai! The excitement grew larger and larger as the day came closer. We left on the 18th which was a Saturday. We headed to the airport, checked in, went through security, and we finally got onto the plane.
Our layover was in London, which was for three hours. The flight to London was 9 hours, which seems like a lot but time passes by quickly. We got off the plane and went through security again, after that we ate and waited for our flight. The plane to Dubai was two floors, which was crazy to see since I’d never seen a plane that big or even heard of it. We didn’t expect as many people to go but it was packed. The plane ride was 7 hours long, so in total to get to Dubai it was 2o hours.
When we landed, we instantly felt the hot air but we didn’t care we were so happy to finally make it. We went through immigration and gathered our bags. As we were heading off to our hotel, I got to see the Burj Khalifa, which from afar seemed really skinny, but you couldn’t really see since it was 12 am when we got there.
The next morning, we got up and got ready for the day. The first place our tour guide took us to the Dubai Frame which is this big gold frame that you can go inside of, there was really nothing too special about it but it was cool to see the view it has. After that, we went to the older part of Dubai which had the gold and spice market, it’s super busy and people are always trying to sell you something, but it was fun seeing the tons of varities of jewerly and spices they had. After that we drove to the Dubai mall, which is the biggest mall in the world, consisting of 2000 stores, as you can imagine it was super busy with different people from around the world. The last thing we did was watch the sunset at the top of the Burj Khalfia, which was so cool to see everything from the top, it was definitely a very unique experience.
Throughout our stay in Dubai we did a lot of things, for example we drove to Abu Dhabi which has the largest Islamic mosque, Ferrari World, the governor’s palace, and many more things. Visiting the mosque was amazing, the architecture was cool to look at, Ferrari World has the world’s fastest rollercoaster which unforunately we couldn’t get on due to malfunctions, and the governor’s palace was super interesting seeing where world leaders go and have meetings.
On Thanksgiving, we got on a helicopter, which again was super cool seeing the Palm and downtown! The ride lasted 17 minutes which was enough to see a lot Dubai from the sky. After that we went to Burj Al Arab, the hotel known for having 7 stars, we went there for lunch, the restaurant was seafood which was honestly one of the best seafood meals I’ve had. To finish off the day, we went on a safari tour, honestly this was my favorite part of the whole trip. We drove for an hour to the desert where they let us drive ATVS on the sand dunes, which felt so cool. We took pictures with a falcon and did sandboarding. After we went to this desert camp, where they gave us traditional Arab food, and gave us a show (typical folkdancing, bellydancing, and tricks with fire). The last thing we did, was to ride a camel. After that we got to the hotel and packed our things, since we were going to leave early the next day to Istanbul Turkey!
