Epic Honeymoon - Day 01 - Dubai

Zipping along the tracks on the Dubai metro.

Welcome to Part 1 of I-don’t-know-how-many-parts of my Honeymoon blog! My wife and I planned our massively epic honeymoon for more than a year (she planned it for about 4 years before we even met), and I was told by my boss that I was setting some kind of record for vacations at my company! Using my hard-earned frequent flyer points to get the main flights to and from Europe (plus a nice chunk of taxes), we planned our itinerary throughout, opting to cover as many countries as we could!

On Thursday 14^th September, 2017, we set off on our epic adventure. For several years now, Emirates has done direct flights to Dubai from my home city of Adelaide, which makes connecting through to Europe much quicker. It also gave us an excuse to stop in the UAE and actually see what all of the fuss is about!

Unfortunately, our first mistake was arriving on a Friday morning – of course we couldn’t control what time the plane landed. But with Friday being a weekend / important religious day in Islamic countries, it means everything opens much later – including the metro. We had planned to take a metro from the airport to get to our hotel, but the first trains only start at 10am on Fridays. We didn’t fancy hanging around the airport for 4 hours (although, it turned out that probably would have been a good idea!), so we jumped in a cab.

After dodging the well-suited limousine cab drivers, who were a bit angry when they saw us in a normal cab, we arrived at our hotel, Regal Plaza Hotel, within about 20 minutes for a cab fare of 57 Dirham (about AUD 25). The hotel’s first impression was not great – the lobby area had a bit of a dank feeling to it, but this might have just been because it was so early. Later on, after we checked in, we were quite pleased with the room. It must be noted, though – and we are not sure if this is a widespread thing in Dubai, or just this hotel – that Regal Plaza will not allow couples with different nationalities to stay in the same room, and all married couples must present a marriage certificate to be allowed in the same room. Luckily, we had brought some copies!

We couldn’t actually check in until 2pm, so we left our bags and tried to make a plan for the morning. Of course, this is where it kicked in that sitting at the airport might have been a good idea – we couldn’t get anywhere because the metro wasn’t running! On top of that, almost no shops and businesses open until later, too. We sat at McDonalds for an hour or so and then took a walk down towards the Dubai Creek. The morning sun was kicking in and it was brutally hot! We headed back the way we came and entering the refreshing metro A/C right on the dot of 10am.

Dubai Metro station.

The Dubai metro is quite simple and efficient. We opted to just go with the red card, which is the lowest level. It costs the least to issue, but each ride will be slightly better value on the higher level cards - it really depends on how much you're going to use it while you're in Dubai, so do some reading before you make a choice.

Our first stop was the unashamedly tourist-Mecca of Dubai Mall, also home to the almighty Burj Khalifa. The metro station is actually a long walk through purpose-built tunnels to get into the mall, and it almost feels like you’ll never get there. You can see the Burj out the tunnel windows, but not in its entirety. The mall itself is a massive monolith to commercialism, with basically every brand under the sun occupying its own store. While my wife likes to shop, she’s not crazy about wasting money (marriage jackpot??), so the mall basically became a nice place to walk and stay out of the heat.

The opulence of Dubai Mall.

On the Lower Ground floor, we found the entrance to the Burj’s “At The Top” attraction, but we had already decided not to bother with this. Even to go to the lowest level was more than AUD 40 per person, and the views seen on the internet didn’t wow us that much. I had thought it would be cool to be in a building at some 800m above the ground, but then it turns out even the top observation deck – which costs extra on top of the initial price – is only 550m or so up. At the end of the day, the Burj is a modern feat of amazing engineering. But Dubai is just buildings in a desert; looking up at it is better than looking down from it.

The almighty Burj Khalifa.

After having some lunch in the Mall, we continued down the metro line to Mall of the Emirates – but not to look at more shops. From here, we transferred to bus 81 out the front of the mall so we could go check out the Burj Al Arab (the famous sailboat hotel). We accidentally stayed on the bus too long, expecting to come by a stop with the hotel’s name, but ended up quite a way down the main road running along the beach. We hopped off and got the bus back the other way before walking out onto Jumeriah Beach. Unfortunately, the view was not great due to the smog, and the brutal Arabian sun was just starting to frustrate us! We opted to get back on the bus and head to the hotel to check in and relax for a while. At some point on our journey, our “return” metro ticket actually ran out, but the bus drivers didn’t seem to notice!

Dubai Waterfall fountain.

In the evening, we came out around our hotel area and searched for a quick dinner, deciding on a little kebab shop just across the intersection from our hotel. It was a quick and easy dinner, and that was all she wrote for the first day; we’d been awake since 3am or so, and so we called it a night.

Continue the adventure on Day 02!