High Views in Dubai

Hello readers! It’s hard to believe I’m half way done with my trip! It has been the longest, shortest 6 days here in Dubai. I have created so many memories with my classmates and professors! I am truly blessed to have an opportunity to be able to be able to tour this country and learn all the tourist ins and outs.

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Today we started with a class meeting. We talked about our experience so far and things that could be improved for future trips. We also spoke about our assignments (I know, lame) and our final project after we get back to the states. As many of you already know, I am heading to Glasgow, Scotland for the spring semester, so my presentation will be a little bit different than the rest of my classmates. I am going to make a travel video of Dubai from footage I’ve been collecting from the different places and tours we have gone on. I am hoping to get it done before I leave for Scotland, fingers crossed!

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Our first stop of the day was the Burj Khalifa. We ventured up to the 125th floor (out of 160). It took only a minute to get from ground floor to the 125th floor! My ears were popping like crazy. After getting there, we took lots of pictures. It doesn’t feel that tall when you're looking down and the constant haze of the city doesn’t give you a super clean city camera shot. It was still very cool—they had a virtual reality glass floor that “cracked” when you step on it. It was very entertaining for the children running around. We took lots of cool pictures with our ISU flag (REPRESENT, holla) and our stuffed animal Cy!

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Our next stop was the Dubai Miracle Gardens. This is a HUGE garden that has giant hedge statues of cats, elephants, and Disney characters like Goofy, Minnie, and Mickey Mouse. There were flowers EVERYWHERE! They also covered castles with flowers and vines. To top it all off, they had a lifelike flower Emirates Airplane! They were also selling grilled corn, so obviously some of us Iowan girls had to get in on some of that! It was very cool and Instagram worthy!

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Our last and longest stop of the day was the Global Village. The best way to describe this place is like Disney’s Epcot, but instead of rides and bars, it was all market stands. It was like the souks, but each country had different items from said country. It was very big and VERY busy. I could not find an ATM and it was probably a good thing too. I definitely do NOT need to spend anymore money on this trip. I gotta say though, the most annoying thing about this trip is that you have to buy water everywhere. Their tap water is not safe to drink, so I can’t refill anything. That’s something I definitely took for granted in the U.S.

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I am excited for tomorrow, as we will travel to Abu Dhabi to see the very beautiful mosque and the louvre. Until then, enjoy the pictures from the day!