Dubai is one of seven autonomous emirates which formed the UAE federation on 1971. As part of our itinerary, we are here until around lunchtime tomorrow. This should give us a bit more time to see what the city has to offer.

After clearing the secure area of the port and finding a taxi, our first stop was the Dubai Museum . Housed within the restored Al-Fahaidi Fort that was built in 1799 to defend against invasion, the museum has served as both a palace and prison. Its collection includes life-sized figures and galleries depicting Arab houses, mosques, date gardens, desert and marine life. Entry into the museum was around $2. As it was hot outside and the museum was air conditioned, we found ourselves slowly making our way through the various exhibits. While slightly kitsch, the exhibits gave us a good idea of what life was like before their oil related economic boom and how the city has grown since.

After the museum, we spent about 45 minutes trying to locate the Gold Souk that was supposed to be near by. We didn't end up find it, but instead had a lovely encounter with the owner of a nearby shop who wanted to sell us a brand of scent that we didn’t want in a bottle size we didn’t want. After about 15 minutes of 'what about this scent’, ‘no thank you, we actually want scent X in a 50mL bottle, do you have it?’ back and forth, we made a quick (and possibly rude) exit .

While the taxi’s weren’t too expensive, we decided that it would be fun to catch the metro to our next destination – the Dubai Mall.

Once we had purchased our metro tickets, we were faced with a choice – which train carriage we needed to get in to. On each of its trains, the Dubai Metro has a women and children only carriage. On our first train, this carriage was only in operation during peak periods.

On the second train, Mum had a less than pleasant incident with a woman who decided that only she would have access to the hand rail. Mum reports that for the entire train ride, this woman was squeezing Mum’s arm in an attempt to get her to let go. I don’t think she succeeded in getting Mum to let go. Having arrived at the correct station for the Mall we got off the train and continued on our way.

The Metro station was a bit of a hike from the Mall, however we were assisted most of the way by several long and quite fast travelators.

The Dubai Mall is the largest in the world and boasts 1200 shops, an aquarium and an ice rink. It’s huge! We wandered around trying to find a suitable place to eat. After a 40 minute search we found the food court. Mum was good and ate local cuisine, I however was due to do a water based activity in less than 45 minutes and opted for something I knew and opted for Burger King .

At 2pm it was time for me to head to the aquarium. Many people may think, why would you go to an aquarium, shouldn’t you be getting cultured and seeing stuff? Well three reasons. 1. It’s in the middle of a mall. 2. It boasts the world’s largest acrylic panel in as part of their main tank. 3. For a certain price, they let you go diving in their main tank.

While researching things to do during the trip, I came across the Aquarium website and noticed that you can go diving with the sharks. As an avid scuba diver, I thought "hmm interesting, my log book would look good with an aquarium dive in it".

Prior to getting into the water I had to watch a video that let me know that you’re more likely to die from using your toaster than from a shark attack. The video also outlined the do’s and don’ts for behaviour in the tank. Most of it was common sense like don’t wave your hands around in front of the sharks as they may think your hands are the tasty white fish they get fed. My favourite was don’t grab the sharks by the tail.

The dive itself was fairly uneventful; however I did have a cod like fish take an unhealthy interest in my head. I’m not sure if it was the blonde hair it liked or whether it liked the bubbles I was producing but either way it spent a little bit too much time near my hair and blocked my view of the people watching and waving at me . Kids were the best, their parents would get them to wave, so I’d wave back, then they’d get shy and hide and then get brave and wave, so I’d wave  again and they’d giggle and smile. Much fun was had.

After pottering around in the tank for about 30 minutes it was time to get out, get changed, get my certificate and meet Mum out the front of the tank.

We had few  hours until it was dark enough to see the Dubai Fountain show, so we decided to catch the train to the Mall of the Emirates (yes another mall). On the train ride there we could see the Burj Al Arab (aka the hotel shaped like the sail of a ship) in the distance as well as a fairly large mosque.

The Mall of the Emirates is the one that has an indoor ski field. It is also huge. After watching people ski down the slope and a couple of kids making snow angels we had dinner in an upmarket restaurant court (several restaurants each with their on seating area situated together) . The place we chose did Iranian cuisine. My meat skewer thingy was beyond tasty and the rice was soft. The hommos we had was also really good.

Having eaten our fill, we boarded the train back to see the Dubai Fountain. Situated in the shadow of the Burj Khalifa (the really tall one that we had wanted to go up but tickets we only available in the morning and we had other plans) and after dark, the Dubai Fountain does a light and water show every half hour. It is a tourist attraction in itself and going of the crowds that we hanging around, it is very popular.

We stuck around for two shows (my favourite being the second show where the fountain danced to Thriller) and then decided to call it a night. After a full day out and about in the hot desert sun, we returned to the ship tired and possibly a little on the smelly side.

We both had a lovely day in Dubai, however our feet were less than impressed.

Fun fact:
Qatar and Bahrain were originally invited to joint the union but decided not to. Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, they have joined together in the Gulf Cooperation Council for mutual support and self defence.