(We wore long pants to the Burj-al Arab because we didn't want to take any chances with dubai dress codes)
After the burj al Arab we went off to palm islands. This is the Atlantis hotel.

We then went to the mall of the emirates.




In order to fully appreciate the size of the mall, you would have to walk around it for hours. We chose to go indoor skiing instead!


You'll read in the zman that there are 5 slopes. In reality there are 2 slopes with dividers. But I'm not complaining, it was really fun especially since I missed out on skiing this past winter.
It was $52 for 3 hours after the 20% discount for paying with a mastercard!
I always bring a visa, MasterCard and amex from a few different banks when traveling just in case there are fraud alerts or a merchant only takes one of them. But here it saved us $27!
After skiing we got some coffees at the coffee shop overlooking the ski slopes.
We then went to the Burj Khalifa.
The entrance is in the Dubai Mall.
It costs $35 with advance tickets to go up to the observation deck. The Burj is about 2,700 feet tall. The main observation deck is at 1400 feet. So it's only halfway up. Dubai is so hazy that if you would go higher up you wouldn't be able to see much. We chose to go by sunset so we get both views. There are actually two levels and the top one is much less crowded because a lot of people don't realize it's there.
PSA: it took about 40 mins from when we printed out tickets until we were outside on the deck. There's a lot of walking of waiting. And once we decided to leave it was another 45 min wait for the elevator down. They do say sunset is the most crowded.
I personally didn't think it was worth the time or the price. My friend enjoyed it very much. As they always say- YMMV


We then went to watch to Khalifa fountain show right outside the mall.
There's truly nothing like it.
After seeng different water shows in USA, Hong Kong and Singapore, I can truly say nothing compares to the Burj show. The show is every 30 mins. I wish we would've had time for more than one.
We then bought some souvineirs and zoomed back to the hotel to get our bags. At the airport, I went through passport control (with an israeli visa ) without an issue. My friend had to go to a side office where the guy just scribbled Tel Aviv on a paper and sent him off. Not a big deal at all. Just saying.
And now we were off to HKG on an 8 hour Cathay flight in lieflat biz!
Little did we know this would be our only sleep for a day of running around in Hong Kong and a huge hike in phillipines