Another wonderful morning of sleeping in till 9 :) Relocated for the night to another part of the town - much different one. One with green grass in back yard, two level private homes, area with on the premises tennis courts and aquatic center - a very nice location to live. Sunscreen and bikinis on and out to the sun I went :) Later ended up by the pool - oh the joy of jumping into refreshing water in about every 15 minutes, outside temperature is close to 30C again.
Afternoon went for relocating back to the apartment and visiting the Mall of the Emirates. Yeah, that was a bit fancier shopping center. Not to even mention the skiing hill at the one end of the mall. Looking around one would see quite a bit fancier stores this time like Gucci, Versace, YSL, Ralph Lauren, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana, Christian Dior and so on. Of course all the regular stores were present as well. This mall has over 450 stores, over 75 restaurants, largest indoor amusement park in the region and the ski/snowboarding hill.
For the evening we had great plans: starting off with drinks at Atlantis on the artificial islands, then to dinner at one of the skyscrapers to have a look at the lit up city and later to the pubs. Wonderful plans, was waiting forward to the evening. Now it turns out that Prophet Mohammad has a birthday tomorrow which means there will be no alcohol served from 2pm today for the next 24 hours (or something similar). So there goes our plans for the night.
Alcohol in general is allowed here only in the hotel premises. Due to this all bars and night clubs are located underneath hotels. Alcohol buying license is needed to get liquor from the stores. All private areas (so houses, apartments) require an alcohol permit to have any alcohol in the premises. There are some free zones where the rules don't apply, but I could not figure out what is behind those.
We decided to still go out besides the dry law, we assumed all the places to be totally empty and we were correct. Started at Barasti restaurant located on the beach, with marina, view was very nice - Atlantis across the bay and skyscrapers on the other side. Dubai night skyline is beautiful. Second stop was Atlantis hotel where we simply walked around on the beach, enjoyed Dubai skyline from the other side and peeked into the luxurious hotel lobby. Now was desert time :) For this we made our way towards Burj Khalifa and Mall of Dubai. In front of the tower they have dancing water fountain show in the evenings so we found a cafeteria close by to enjoy our cakes. For the last spot there was a plan to go up to a restaurant located high up in a skyscraper close by, but for some reason this place was closed - so no pretty view from up above for us tonight :( Oh well, there is always tomorrow :D
Another thing about restaurants and clubs here (all sorts of clubs like nightclubs, sports clubs etc.) is that many or even most of them are with restricted access, one needs VIP pass to get in. The place where we went to eat is a complex with a restaurant, marina and a sports club, as I understood the yearly pass there costs about 30 to 40 000 dirhams (so about 100 000 EEK). Good deal that we have the right connections for the occasion :)
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