The first week of our three week surprise trip for Shae’s birthday was spent in Dubai. It was our first time visiting the UAE and although we had an idea of what Dubai was like, it was different from – and exceeded – our expectations.
Here’s everything that we got up to on the trip, from where we stayed to what we saw and experienced to where we ate and drank.
Where We Stayed
We spent the entire week at the Grand Hyatt Dubai. It’s a beautiful hotel with several temperature-controlled swimming pools, a great gym, tasty food, lovely staff and more. I have Globalist status with Hyatt and so used one of my Suite Upgrade Awards to upgrade from a regular King room to a one bedroom suite which was stunning. Check out my full review of the Grand Hyatt Dubai here.
What We Did
I hadn’t planned too much for our week in Dubai beyond an activity for Shae’s birthday itself as I wasn’t sure if she’d just want to chill by the pool the entire time or if she’d like to explore Dubai.
It ended up being a good balance of relaxing and exploring, so here’s what we saw while in Dubai.
Burj Khalifa
The most iconic building in Dubai is the Burj Khalifa – the tallest building in the world.
It’s 2,722 feet tall and has 163 floors, although the observation deck – At The Top – is on floor 124. This includes an outdoor area where you can look out over the city.
When visiting At The Top you can also walk up to floor 125 and play a Virtual Reality game. It’s a James Bond-style game where you have to complete challenges around the Burj Khalifa and culminates in you jumping off the top of the building and parachuting down.
Despite it only being VR and not real life, this last challenge freaked both of us out. There’s a fan that starts blowing on you during this part of the game, so it feels like you’re actually outside. You have to look down in order to jump off the edge, but neither Shae nor I could do it like normal and so we both closed our eyes at this point! It sounds ridiculous, but it felt real even though it clearly wasn’t.
There’s a video of Shae experiencing it below – I haven’t uploaded the video she took of me doing it because apparently I swore quite a few times during that last scene without realizing it!
The Dubai Fountain
At the base of the Burj Khalifa is the Dubai Fountain. Starting at 6pm every night, there’s a fountain show every 30 minutes which lasts for about five minutes and is set to music.
It’s free to view the show and it seems like there’s a different song used for the show depending on when you visit. Here’s the fountain show we saw on our final night in Dubai.
Dubai Mall
The Burj Khalifa is next to the Dubai Mall (and attached via an enclosed walkway), with the Dubai Fountain being outside too. We wandered around the mall a couple of times and it was interesting to see the mix of store brands from all around the world.
The mall is so big that it even has a large ice rink and the Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo.
Big Bus Tours Dubai
To see a bit more of Dubai, we decided to do a hop-on, hop-off bus tour with Big Bus Tours. While great in theory, it wasn’t the best experience possible. They provide an audio tour in multiple languages, but many of the outlets where you plug in your headphones weren’t working on the first bus we boarded and so we had to change seats many times in order to listen along.
There were a few places we wanted to stop along the way, but it wasn’t always made clear which stop we were at. That meant we ended up missing the first place we wanted to stop at as there wasn’t any announcement as to where we were.
Spice Souk & Gold Souk
We subsequently got off at the Spice Souk and wandered through there. We bought some spices and nuts from one of the vendors but didn’t do the math on how much it was costing us. It was clear afterwards that we should’ve bartered with him, but even if that had occurred to us I’m not sure how hard we would’ve haggled as neither of us enjoys that.
We then walked over to the Gold Souk before boarding the next Big Bus Tours bus that came along.
Palm Jumeirah
That bus took us on to the Palm Jumeirah. You’ve probably seen photos of the Palm Jumeirah from above – it’s the impressive feat of engineering that created a manmade island shaped like a palm tree using more than 3 billion cubic feet of sand dredged from the sea, along with 7 million tons of rock which helped create the foundations.
You can’t see the island’s palm tree shape from ground level, although driving along on the bus you can see its fronds curving out. We got off at the Atlantis and stopped for a couple of drinks at Wavehouse, one of the hotel’s restaurants.
Cereal Killer Café
Big Bus Tours starts and ends at the Dubai Mall, so we walked back through at the end of our tour so that Shae could visit Cereal Killer Café.
She’s a huge cereal fan, so this was a really fun experience for her. Even the seating is fun, with children’s beds set up for you to sit on.
Her meal contained more artificial coloring than you would think it would be possible to have 😉 That’s because her bowl of cereal contained Froot Loops, Fruity Pebbles & Oops All Berries and she also ordered a rainbow grilled cheese sandwich.
Dubai Desert Adventure
On Shae’s actual birthday we headed out into the desert for a tour which included camel riding, dune bashing, sandboarding, quad biking and more. It was an amazing afternoon and evening, so check out this post where we shared much more about it.
McDonald’s
This might sound strange, but Shae and I love eating at McDonald’s when traveling overseas. Not because we don’t like trying food from the country that we’re visiting – we do – but because we also like trying out their take on McDonald’s. Most countries we’ve visited have different menu items at McDonald’s that aren’t on the menu in the US.
Dubai was no exception. I ordered a McArabia Chicken which was a large flatbread and contained a couple of chicken patties, garlic mayonnaise, lettuce, onions and tomatoes.
Shae on the other hand ordered a Spicy Veg Pizza McPuff which she enjoyed.
Social Company
We had an incredibly fun evening at a restaurant called Social Company one evening which is at Zabeel House. We met up with Kirsty who I’ve been friends with since my teens, but hadn’t seen in about 20 years. We’ve stayed connected since then, but it was great seeing her again in person as she currently lives in Dubai.
Social Company had a pub quiz that night which we won by half a point which made the evening even more delightful! The food was delicious too; Shae ordered the butter chicken curry and I got the 72 hour beef short rib which came with mashed potato, baby leeks, broccoli and fried carrot.
Mirzam Chocolate Makers Factory & Store
Kirsty got Shae a couple of lovely boxes of chocolates from Mirzam Chocolate Makers Factory & Store for her birthday. She also recommended visiting them, so we went there for hot chocolate on our final night in Dubai. Their hot chocolates are all made using dark chocolate which wasn’t something I’d had before but it was very good.
Final Thoughts
Before visiting Dubai I’d pictured everything being gold, opulent and possibly a little tacky – like a giant Las Vegas. That wasn’t the case though. There’s clearly a lot of money there, but everything is tastefully done rather than tacky and is a fun place to visit.
Shae had found a list of 100 things to do in Dubai and we probably only did half a dozen of them, so there’s lots more to experience if we return to Dubai in the future.
Check Out All The Posts From Our Dubai/Egypt/Jordan Trip
- It’s Time For Shae’s Secret Birthday Extravaganza!
- Flight Review: Emirates First Class – Chicago (ORD) To Dubai (DXB)
- Hotel Review: Grand Hyatt Dubai (1 Bedroom Grand Suite)
- Awesome Dubai Desert Safari For Shae’s 40th Birthday
- 1 Week In Dubai: Here’s What We Did
- Hotel Review: Ramses Hilton In Cairo, Egypt
- Exploring Babylon Fortress In Old Cairo, Egypt
- Visiting The Pyramids Of Giza In Cairo, Egypt
- Hotel Review: Marriott Mena House In Cairo, Egypt
- 6 Days In Cairo, Egypt – Here’s What We Did
- Our Dead Sea Experience: Floating, Mud & Tequila Shots!
- Hotel Review: Hilton Dead Sea Resort & Spa, Jordan
- 10 Tips For Driving In Jordan
- Visiting Petra In Jordan – One Of The New 7 Wonders Of The World
- Hotel Review: Petra Marriott, Jordan
- 1 Week In Jordan – Here’s What We Did
- Flight Review: Turkish Airlines Business Class – Istanbul (IST) To Chicago (ORD)
- Hotel Review: Hilton Chicago O’Hare Airport, IL
- Spending Breakdown: 3 Weeks In Dubai, Egypt & Jordan – Here’s What It Cost
Did you buy any Gold jewelry
We didn’t, no – we just wandered through the Gold Souk without buying anything.