Day 41 - Beware of Ramadan!

Dubai to Melbourne

With a full day to spend and with the temperature topping 40 degrees we did the only sensible thing and headed for the Dubai Mall - a virtual indoor (air conditioned) world. We bought our tickets to go to to the top of Dubai's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa,

High in Dubai

After checking out the views from the upper levels of the building, we decided it was time for lunch, and having slept in due to the late arrival the previous night, as well as the time difference, we arrived at the mall around 3pm to discover it was Ramadan! How stupid were we, no food or drink to be consumed in public until sunset (around 7.15pm) - not even water! The food courts we saw which might have had food were all covered, so K questioned a security guard what this actually meant, she was told she could eat in her house or her car - a bit tricky for us though. K found a place that was operating and ordered some chips, then headed for the nursing mother's room which consisted of lovely, well furnished private rooms, where she promptly and rapidly scoffed her chips.

After wandering around the mall, killing time until 7:15pm, we found a second food court upstairs - which had been operating all along for people who didn't observe Ramadan .... if only we had found this earlier .... and why didn't the guard we questioned earlier tell us about it??!!!

We watched the water and light show at the mall, then finally had something substantial and quite tasty at a Lebanese restaurant, before heading back to the hotel to pick up our luggage, then heading off to the airport and flying back home to Melbourne.