Today a few of us took a cab out to the Mall of the Emirates (http://www.malloftheemirates.com/) - a very nice, very large mall ... complete with its own indoor downhill skiing area! Rachel and I went to Ski Dubai - for $50 you got ski rental, jacket & snowpant rental, and a 2 hour lift ticket. The coolest thing was the lift tickets - they were actually proximetry key cards that you wore in a little pocket in the shoulder of the jacket, and you skied through a turnstile before getting to the lift and it read your card and told you how many minutes of your two hours you had left. The hill itself had really only two runs, though the lift let you off halfway up for new skiers. They also had a bunny hill and lots of snowy play areas for kids where they could ski or go tubing. There was also a massive jump with a big blowup pillowy bag to land on. It was very odd to have the lift attached to the ceiling (painted sky blue), plus there were several fake fir trees around. There was a cute little building halfway up the hill where you could add more minutes to your lift pass, get snacks and hot chocolate, and use the bathrooms. I also liked that there were several restaurants that had huge windows looking into Ski Dubai and tons of people standing around taking pictures. One restaurant even had LCD TVs built into a fireplace, showing videos of a fire for ambience. We met a couple Czech guys, one of whom works for an adventure tour company in Dubai, so we got his business card in case we come back and are looking for more things to do. We also met a couple French guys who spoke very little English, but were excited to learn we were from near Chicago ("that's, um, in ze state Illinios, yes?" and pronounced Illinois with the accurate French pronounciation (like trois) - too funny).
Note the capris, tshirt, and sandals I wore into the mall:
Check out the fake firs:
The view from the top:
This turned out blurry, but here's the view from near the bottom - you can see all the lights in the restaurant windows at the bottom:
Note the capris, tshirt, and sandals I wore into the mall:
Check out the fake firs:
The view from the top:This turned out blurry, but here's the view from near the bottom - you can see all the lights in the restaurant windows at the bottom:And then I had some fantastic sushi for lunch. It was so pretty I had to take a picture:
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